Tracking the space debris from the Changchun Observatory
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Tracking the space debris from the Changchun Observatory Zhipeng Liang1 · Xue Dong1 · Makram Ibrahim2 Guohai Zhao1
· Qingli Song1 · Xingwei Han1,3 · Chengzhi Liu1 · Haitao Zhang1 ·
Received: 30 July 2019 / Accepted: 2 November 2019 / Published online: 18 November 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Changchun Observatory tracked Space Debris since Feb. 2014. This paper presents the technologies and results of Changchun station for space debris laser ranging (DLR) system. The system operates with a laser of 60 mJ/10 ns/500 Hz@532 nm laser and an optical camera for closed-loop tracking. Target selection assistant was introduced to DLR system. To represent the probability of return, the rebound index was calculated. Data identification was implemented in tracking control software and data processing. To improve the return rate, Range Bias/Time Bias is auto-corrected in the tracking software. The aim of this paper is to show the results and the analysis of the space debris observed during the period from the year 2014 to the year 2016. There are 491 passes observed for 232 different space debris targets were obtained during 35 terminator sessions. The observed targets are ranging between 460 km to 1800 km, with Radar Cross Sections (RCS) from > 15 m2 to < 1.0 m2 . The Root Mean Square (RMS) value of the range is measured to be less than 1 m for small targets, due to the 10 ns laser pulse length while for large objects it can reach up to 3.5 meters. Keywords Space debris laser ranging · Changchun SLR-station · Target selection assistant · DLR system · Rebound index
B M. Ibrahim
[email protected]
1
Changchun Observatory of National Astronomical Observatories, CAS, Changchun, China
2
National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, Helwan 11421, Cairo, Egypt
3
Key Laboratory of Space object and Debris Observation, Purple Mountain Observatory, CAS, Nanjing, China
1 Introduction The laser ranging technique is considered to be one of the most accurate methods to track the artificial earth satellites (Pearlman et al. 2002). The primary goal of the satellite laser ranging is the measurement of the time required for pulses emitted by a laser transmitter to travel to a satellite and return back to the transmitting site. The “range”, or distance between the satellite and the tracking site, is approximately one half of the two—ways travel time multiplied by the speed of light. A lot of work deals with the satellite laser ranging technique (Cech et al. 1998; Zhao et al. 2008; Ibrahim 2011; Ibrahim et al. 2015). In Changchun observatory, the daytime tracking started at 11 am of May 16th, 2008. It is carried out by updating the original system to adapt the new technology for daylight KHz (Zhao et al. 2006; Yang et al. 1999; Han et al. 2013). The Changchun station started the space debris laser ranging at the end of 2013, using the 60 cm aperture laser ranging system. The aim of this paper is to discuss the space debris laser ranging from the Changchun observatory. One of the main applications
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