CAM Optimization

For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt.

CAM (Collision Avoidance Maneuver) Optimization helps you find the best avoidance maneuver for an active conjunction event. A guided 6-step wizard sweeps through a range of delta-V magnitudes and maneuver directions, filters the results, lets you select an optimal candidate, and evaluates how that candidate would affect other future conjunctions on the same spacecraft. Route: Opened from the Conjunction Classification page via the CAM Optimization button.

Wizard Overview

The CAM Optimization dialog is a 6-step wizard:

Step	Name	Purpose
1	Conjunction	Select the conjunction event and alert to analyze
2	Constraints	Configure sweep parameters and thruster
3	Time Filter	Restrict maneuver execution to specific time windows
4	Direction Filter	Constrain maneuver directions using a directional cone
5	Options	Review results, select a candidate, and create the plan
6	Evaluate impact on	Compare the selected candidate against other future conjunctions

Step 1: Conjunction

Select the conjunction event and alert data that will be used for the avoidance maneuver computation.

Spacecraft Selection

The spacecraft is selected in the dialog header. Changing the spacecraft resets the conjunction selection.

Conjunction Selection

Use the dropdown to select an active conjunction (only conjunctions with a future TCA are shown). Conjunctions are sorted by TCA ascending, and the first one is selected automatically. Each entry shows the conjunction code with a risk shield icon. Once selected, the conjunction card displays the TCA (Time of Closest Approach) and the Secondary Object name.

Alert Selection

After selecting a conjunction, choose which alert (CDM) to use as the data source. Alerts are sorted by timestamp with the latest first, and the most recent alert is selected automatically. The alert card shows the Criticality level, Miss Distance (in meters), and PoC (Probability of Collision). Below the summary, the Primary Object and Secondary Object panels show the position vector, velocity vector, and position sigma in the RTN frame.

Step 2: Constraints

Configure the sweep parameters and thruster that control how candidate maneuvers are computed.

Hard-Body Radii

Field	Description	Unit
Primary HBR	Hard body radius of the primary object	m
Secondary HBR	Hard body radius of the secondary object	m

Hard-body radii are provided by the user. Information can sometimes be present as comments on the CDM file.

Delta-V Range

Define the range of velocity changes to sweep through.

Field	Description	Unit
Min	Minimum delta-V magnitude	m/s
Max	Maximum delta-V magnitude	m/s
Step	Increment between delta-V values	m/s

Angular Sweep

Define the range of maneuver directions to sweep through.

Field	Description	Unit
Start	Starting sweep angle	deg
End	Ending sweep angle	deg
Step	Increment between angular values	deg

Thruster Selection

Select which thruster to use for computing burn parameters. The thruster’s specifications (thrust, ISP, max burn time, direction) are displayed for reference.

Step 3: Time Filter

Optionally restrict the maneuver execution time to specific windows between now and TCA.

By default, no execution windows are defined and all maneuver times between now and TCA are considered. Click Add Execution Window to restrict the search to specific time ranges. Set the mode to Inclusion (maneuver epochs within defined windows) or Exclusion (maneuver epochs avoid defined windows). Each window defines a start and end time using date-time pickers bounded between now and TCA. Only maneuvers within these windows will be considered. You can add multiple windows, but they cannot overlap — overlapping windows are flagged with a validation error. This step is optional, you can proceed to the next step without adding any windows.

Step 4: Direction Filter

Optionally constrain maneuver directions using a directional cone in RTN (Radial-Tangential-Normal) space.

Set the mode to Inclusion (only within the cone) or Exclusion (avoid the cone), then define the cone parameters.

Element	Description
Mode	None, Inclusion, or Exclusion
Axis R, T, N	RTN components of the cone axis direction vector
Half-Angle	Angular radius of the cone in degrees
3D Preview	Interactive visualization of the directional cone

A reference-frame indicator badge appears next to the 3D Preview title showing RTN — the frame the cone axis components are expressed in. Hover the badge to see the full frame name and click Learn more to open the reference frame catalog for the canonical definition. This step is optional, leave the mode set to None to skip direction filtering. Running the computation: Clicking Next at the end of Step 4 triggers the sweep-filter computation. The system evaluates all combinations of delta-V magnitudes and sweep angles, applies the configured time and direction filters, and advances to Step 5 with the results.

Step 5: Options

Review the sweep-filter results, select a candidate maneuver, and create the maneuver plan. The options shown correspond to the Pareto frontier of maneuver solutions. Only non-dominated candidates are displayed—each represents an optimal trade-off between Δv and collision risk (PoC). Solutions that are strictly worse (higher Δv and higher PoC) are filtered out.

Scatter Plot

The scatter plot displays all remaining candidates after filtering. The Y-axis always shows Delta-V (m/s). Use the tabs above the chart to toggle the X-axis between Miss Distance (post-maneuver, linear scale) and Collision Probability (post-maneuver PoC, logarithmic scale). Interactions:

Hover a point to see a tooltip with candidate details (delta-V, miss distance, post-PoC)
Click a point to select it — the point turns green and grows larger

Pipeline Statistics

A summary line below the chart shows the filtering pipeline:

N total candidates → X Pareto filtered, Y time filtered, Z direction filtered → M remaining

Zero Remaining Candidates

If the pipeline returns zero remaining candidates, all feasible maneuvers were filtered out. This does not mean no maneuver exists, it means the current combination of constraints is too restrictive.
To recover candidates, go back and try the following adjustments:

Widen the delta-V range in Step 2
Edit execution windows in Step 3
Increase the cone half-angle or remove the direction filter in Step 4.

Selected Candidate Detail

When a candidate is selected, the detail panel shows:

Field	Description
Delta-V	Velocity change magnitude in m/s
Maneuver Time	Optimal time for the maneuver (UTC)
Direction RTN	Normalized maneuver direction in RTN frame
Delta-V RTN	Velocity change components [R, T, N] in m/s
Miss Distance (pre)	Miss distance before maneuver in meters
Miss Distance (post)	Miss distance after maneuver in meters
PoC (pre)	Probability of collision before maneuver
PoC (post)	Probability of collision after maneuver

Plan Name and Description

After selecting a candidate, fill in the plan details:

Element	Description
Plan Name	Required — minimum 3 characters, maximum 255
Description	Optional — maximum 2000 characters

Creating the Plan

Click Create Maneuver Plan in the dialog footer to finalize. The system creates a maneuver plan linked to the conjunction event and the selected thruster. On success, the dialog closes and the new plan appears in the Burn Plan page.

Step 6: Evaluate impact on

After selecting a candidate maneuver in Step 5, use Step 6 to evaluate how the candidate affects another future conjunction on the same spacecraft. The panel lets you pick one secondary conjunction at a time and compares its pre- and post-maneuver geometry side by side, surfacing any candidate that resolves the conjunction outright or degrades its PoC.

Secondary Conjunction Selector

The panel header reads Evaluate impact on followed by an inline picker. The picker lists every other future conjunction on the same spacecraft, excluding the primary, excluding conjunctions whose CDM declares a rotating-RTN covariance frame, and bounded to the next 7 days from the candidate’s maneuver time. The first eligible conjunction is selected automatically — the one whose code is the smallest code strictly greater than the primary’s, falling back to the first by ascending sort. If no other future conjunctions exist for the spacecraft, the panel displays No other future conjunctions on this spacecraft. instead of the picker and table.

Comparison Table

A 4-column table with the headers Field, Pre, Post, and Δ compares the selected secondary conjunction’s pre-maneuver values — read from its own cached record — against post-maneuver values returned by the secondary-impact evaluation, plus a Δ indicator for the rows where it carries a meaningful safety direction.

Row	What it shows
Miss Distance	Pre and Post miss distance in metres, plus a Δ indicator. The Post cell is blank when the conjunction is eliminated.
PoC	Pre and Post Probability of Collision, plus a Δ indicator. Post-PoC accuracy caveats appear as inline cell badges.
TCA	Pre and Post Time of Closest Approach, in UTC. The Δ cell is empty — date deltas have no single safety direction.
Criticality	Pre and Post criticality shield. The Pre shield reads the backend-stored classification verbatim; the Post shield is recomputed from the post-maneuver PoC and miss distance against the tenant’s thresholds, with a green Eliminated shield rendered when the encounter no longer occurs (the same level the row badge below the table calls out). The Δ cell is empty.

A small disclaimer above the table reminds you that Ranking metric across CAM candidates — not a certified absolute collision probability. The Δ column colors follow safety direction, not numeric sign: an upward arrow on Miss Distance is green (farther apart is safer), a downward arrow on PoC is green (lower probability is safer), and vice versa. A neutral grey arrow means the value did not change; the cell is left empty for fields with no clear safety direction (TCA, Criticality) or when the Pre or Post value is missing.

Cell Badges

Per-cell badges surface why a value should be read with caution. They appear inline next to the value they qualify. A small set of badges land on the Post PoC cell whenever the secondary-impact response carries the matching condition:

Badge	Cell	Meaning
Upper bound	Post PoC	The reported PoC is an upper-bound estimate, not a point value.
HEO/GTO — extra caution	Post PoC	Highly elliptical orbit geometry — treat the post-maneuver row with extra caution.
TCA-spread	Post PoC	Post-maneuver TCAs span more than one primary orbital period — see the Ranking degraded ribbon.
CDM declares rotating RTN — frame unsupported	Post PoC	The CDM uses a covariance frame the engine cannot evaluate.

Two badges land on the Post TCA cell:

Badge	Cell	Meaning
horizon-truncated	Post TCA	The minimum range was found at the edge of the search horizon — the post-TCA value is geometry-bounded.
Not affected by maneuver	Post TCA	The candidate maneuver epoch is after the pre-maneuver TCA, so the secondary geometry is unchanged.

Additional Post-PoC badges render directly from the response’s reason codes. Common labels include Flat minimum, Horizon edge, Covariance degenerate, Default HBR, TLE covariance unavailable, Geometry indeterminate, Parent-CAM method mismatch, and — when the encounter-plane covariance is so elongated that the PoC engine falls back to an aspect-ratio strategy — Ar fallback or Ar extreme. New backend reason codes appear here as soon as they ship: the frontend renders them in title case (CAPOC_X_Y → X y) without a separate release. When a cell has no badge, the value carries no caveats.

Row Badges

Row-level badges live in a footer below the table and describe the row as a whole, not a single cell.

Badge	Meaning
Eliminated by maneuver	The candidate fully resolves the secondary conjunction — the encounter no longer happens.
Indeterminate — geometry recomputation failed	The post-maneuver geometry could not be recomputed (propagator or refinement error).
low-fidelity-secondary-ephemeris	The secondary uses an SGP4 ephemeris — read all post-maneuver values with extra caution.

Retry

When an evaluation fails (network error, refinement non-convergence, propagator error, etc.), a Retry button appears in the footer alongside the row badges. Click Retry to re-run the evaluation for the currently selected conjunction without changing the candidate selection.

Ranking Degraded Ribbon

When the selected conjunction’s post-maneuver TCAs span more than one primary orbital period across the swept candidates, a Ranking degraded alert ribbon appears above the table:

Ranking degraded: candidates’ post-maneuver TCAs on at least one selected conjunction span more than one primary orbital period

The ribbon signals that the per-candidate PoC ranking is no longer reliable for the affected row, because different candidates resolve to genuinely different encounter geometries instead of small perturbations of the same one. Cross-check the candidate against the Step 5 scatter before committing to a plan.

Key Concepts

For foundational concepts like delta-V, Probability of Collision (PoC), miss distance, and conjunctions, see Core Concepts. The following concepts are specific to CAM optimization:

Sweep Angle

The direction of the avoidance maneuver in the orbital plane, measured in degrees. The system sweeps through a range of angles to evaluate maneuver effectiveness in different directions.

Pareto Filtering

After computing all candidate maneuvers, the system applies Pareto filtering to identify the optimal frontier — candidates where no other option is better in both delta-V cost and collision risk reduction. This eliminates dominated solutions, leaving only the most efficient trade-offs.

Conjunction Classification — View and manage conjunction events and risk levels
Conjunction Computation — Recompute conjunction assessments with your own state vectors
Burn Plan — View and manage spacecraft maneuver plans

Spacecraft Management

Orbit Analysis

Measurements

Ephemeris Generation

Maneuver Operations

Security & Access

STM

Areas of Interest

Automation

Attitude

Wizard Overview