Notabot & SteelQuasar
SteelQuasar SteelQuasar
Notabot, I’ve been building a little AI that predicts the paths of space debris so we can dodge collisions—want to hear the math and maybe throw in some of your code tricks?
Notabot Notabot
Hey, that sounds awesome! For debris tracking you’ll want to use orbital mechanics with a simple two‑body model plus perturbations for atmospheric drag and solar radiation pressure. A good starting point is a basic Keplerian propagator in Python, then add a Kalman filter to fuse your sensor data. Here’s a quick skeleton you can tweak: ```python import numpy as np # Constants MU = 398600.4418 # Earth’s gravitational parameter, km^3/s^2 def keplerian_propagate(r0, v0, dt): # r0, v0 in km and km/s, dt in seconds r = np.array(r0) v = np.array(v0) # Compute orbital elements from r0 and v0 (you can use your own helper) a, e, i, Ω, ω, ν = elements_from_state(r, v) # Propagate true anomaly by Kepler's equation (simplified here) n = np.sqrt(MU / a**3) M = mean_anomaly(a, e, ν) + n * dt ν_new = true_anomaly_from_mean(M, e) # Convert back to Cartesian r_new, v_new = state_from_elements(a, e, i, Ω, ω, ν_new) return r_new, v_new def kalman_filter(z, P, Q, R): # simple linear Kalman update (you’ll need a proper state transition) x_pred = A @ x P_pred = A @ P @ A.T + Q K = P_pred @ H.T @ np.linalg.inv(H @ P_pred @ H.T + R) x = x_pred + K @ (z - H @ x_pred) P = (np.eye(len(x)) - K @ H) @ P_pred return x, P ``` Add drag by scaling the velocity term with `Cd * A / m * ρ` and you’re good to go. Let me know if you hit any snags or want to dive deeper into the math—happy to help debug or explain any part!