Hypothesis-Driven Sensor Tasking for Space Domain Awareness

Hypothesis-Driven Sensor Tasking for Space Domain Awareness | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Hypothesis-Driven Sensor Tasking for Space Domain Awareness Ofer Dagan, Tyler Becker, Zachary Sunberg This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8444674/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract When human operators of cyber-physical systems, such as the Space Force's Space Surveillance Tracking (SST) network, encounter surprising behavior, they often consider multiple hypotheses that might explain it. In some cases, taking information-gathering actions such as additional measurements or control inputs given to the system can help resolve uncertainty and identify the most accurate hypothesis. The task of optimizing these actions can be formulated as a belief-space Markov decision process that we call a hypothesis-driven belief MDP. Unfortunately, this problem suffers from the curse of history, similar to a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP).To plan in continuous domains, an agent needs to reason over countlessly many possible action-observation histories, each resulting in a different estimate of the partially observable system state. The problem is exacerbated in the hypothesis-driven context, since each action-observation pair spawns several estimates resulting from the different hypotheses. This paper considers the case in which each hypothesis corresponds to a different dynamic model in an underlying POMDP. We present a new belief MDP formulation that: (i) enables reasoning over multiple hypotheses, (ii) balances the goals of determining the (most likely) correct hypothesis and performing well in the underlying task, and(iii) can be solved with sparse tree search. space domain awareness sensor tasking POMDP multi-hypothesis planning belief MDP Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8444674","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":580662175,"identity":"72f7bcd8-0782-4d3f-a9f6-e015c3d442cb","order_by":0,"name":"Ofer Dagan","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA9UlEQVRIiWNgGAWjYDAC5gNAgg3GKgAxEmAiOAAbXAGIZUCaFh4D4rTwszEf+8BQZmfXP7vn44cPBjb5/O3JBxg+lB3GqUWyjS15BsO55OQZd85ulpxhkGY548yzBMYZ53BrMbjfY8zA2MaczHAjdxszj8FhA4YbOQbMvG14tBzj/wzUUp8sfyPnGViLPEjLX7xaeJiBWg7bGdzIYQNrMQBpYcSjBegXY4aEc8cTDG+kGYP8YmAI9MvBnnPpOLUAQ+wxMHyq7eVuJD/88KHCxkDuePLBBz/KrHFqAYMEBobEBmSBA/jVQ4A9MYpGwSgYBaNghAIA6T9TFuVdAdUAAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"","institution":"University of Colorado Boulder","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Ofer","middleName":"","lastName":"Dagan","suffix":""},{"id":580662176,"identity":"975cb303-b867-412e-93e6-590a1c369413","order_by":1,"name":"Tyler Becker","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Colorado Boulder","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Tyler","middleName":"","lastName":"Becker","suffix":""},{"id":580662178,"identity":"4d4e64da-9d89-40a1-8eb0-ec03a139333c","order_by":2,"name":"Zachary Sunberg","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Colorado Boulder","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Zachary","middleName":"","lastName":"Sunberg","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-12-24 18:23:11","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8444674/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8444674/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":101376866,"identity":"b36d958b-c4b6-4af0-b9b4-953c766748b7","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-29 04:55:48","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":764405,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"JASHypothesisDrivenSensorTasking.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8444674/v1_covered_267acbf8-4e29-473e-94ad-186634729b44.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003eHypothesis-Driven Sensor Tasking for Space Domain Awareness\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"space domain awareness, sensor tasking, POMDP, multi-hypothesis planning, belief MDP","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8444674/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8444674/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"When human operators of cyber-physical systems, such as the Space Force's Space Surveillance Tracking (SST) network, encounter surprising behavior, they often consider multiple hypotheses that might explain it. 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