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Creators/Authors contains: "Jones, Brandon A"

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  1. We consider the problem of trajectory planning for optimal relative orbit determination in the cislunar environment. The recent interest in cislunar space has created a need to develop autonomous tracking technologies that can maintain situational awareness of this dynamically complex regime. Optical sensors provide an ideal observation platform because of their low cost and versatility in tracking both cooperative and non-cooperative space objects. The estimation performance of an optical observer can be significantly enhanced through manuevering. This work develops a trajectory planning tool, compatible with low-thrust propulsion, for tracking one or multiple targets operating in proximity to the observer. We formulate an objective function that is a convex combination of the mutual information between target states and measurements, and the low-thrust control effort. The subsequent optimal control problem is solved via direct collocation using the successive convexification algorithm, which, we argue, is well suited for a potential onboard trajectory planning application. We demonstrate the tool for several relevant scenarios with one and multiple targets operating around periodic orbits in the circular restricted three-body problem. A sequential estimator's performance is evaluated using the Cramer-Rao lower bound and, compared to a purely passive observer, we show that optimizing the observer's trajectory can decrease this bound by up to several orders of magnitude within a planning window. This investigation provides an initial proof-of-concept to future onboard planning technologies for relative tracking in the cislunar domain. 
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  2. null (Ed.)