Space Debris: Optical Measurements

Abstract

Space debris is a major threat to the satellite infrastructure. A collision with even small particle, e.g. 1 cm of size, can cause a catastrophic event when the parent body, spacecraft or upper stage, will break up into hundreds of trackable fragments. Space debris research helps to discover, monitor and characterize these objects, identify their origin and support their active removal. Surveys with optical telescopes aim to discover new objects for cataloguing and to increase the accuracy of space debris population models. The follow-up observations are performed to improve their orbits or to investigate their physical characteristics. We will present the space debris population, its orbital and physical characteristics and we will discuss the role which the optical telescopes play in space debris research. We will also discuss the adopted astronomical techniques like astrometry, photometry and spectroscopy used in the space debris domain.

Influences of Space Weather Forecasting Uncertainty on Satellite Conjunction Assessment

“…Mass m , exposed frontal area A , and drag coefficient C d are often very uncertain because these quantities require knowledge of the properties of the object being tracked that cannot be readily estimated directly from remote measurements. The rough size and mass of the object under study have been inferred from past orbital history (Gondelach et al., 2017), measurements of radar cross section (Dickey & Culp, 1989) or visual magnitude (Šilha, 2020). A and C d are a function of satellite attitude, which is difficult to measure in real‐time.…”