PErformance Analysis of Space Surveillance Using Space-Based Optical Sensors
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
PErformance Analysis of Space Surveillance Using Space‑Based Optical Sensors Federica Vitiello1 Received: 17 September 2020 / Revised: 17 September 2020 / Accepted: 8 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper aims to describe the analysis of the performance of an electro-optical space-based sensor for space surveillance purposes and space debris detection in the geostationary (GEO) ring. Such sensor is considered to be operating on a dawn– dusk Sun-synchronous, circular low Earth orbit at an altitude of 630 Km, while its optical characteristics have been taken from those of the Space-Based Visible (SBV) sensor. Two main simulations have been carried out through the use of the MATLAB software. The first simulation deals with the detection capability of the sensor, which is discussed in terms of detectable visual magnitude when the target of the observation is a diffuse sphere orbiting in the geostationary (GEO) orbit; its minimum detectable size is then determined. In addition, the relative geometry between the Sun, the sensor and the target has also been studied along with the configurations which can limit the visibility of the sensor over the target. The second simulation has been used to evaluate the performance of the sensor in terms of number of detectable GEO targets and duration of the observation when a certain pointing strategy is adopted. In such strategy, two SBV-like sensors are placed on the same orbit, thus creating a constellation in which each sensor points towards a fixed location in the inertial space. These locations have been chosen to be the geosynchronous pinch points. Keywords Space debris · Space-based optical Sensors · Visual magnitude · Solar phase angle
1 Introduction The space debris population is composed of objects of various nature which have been brought in orbit by human space activities. Such objects are typically parts of bigger bodies that have detached during collisions or explosions, and their position and velocity are, in most cases, unknown. Because of the uncertainty in the pieces of information regarding this type of objects and because of their non-cooperative nature, space debris poses a serious threat to the operative space assets which are currently orbiting the Earth and to the onEarth population and activities. The current knowledge of the resident space objects (RSO), among active satellites, inactive satellites and space debris, is mainly kept in the Satellite Catalog maintained by the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN), in which the orbital elements of the so-called catalogued objects are listed * Federica Vitiello [email protected] 1
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Napoli “Federico II”, Napoli, Italy
at a given epoch. An explanatory example of the breadth of the space debris issue is given by the fragmentation debris population, which is composed of debris whose genesis is related to fragmentation events. As a matter of fact, as referred to the state of affairs of January the 1st of 2019, it has been
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