Geosynchronous Earth orbital debris campaign

John L. Africano; Paul F. Sydney; David L. Talent; Eugene G. Stansbery; Kandy S. Jarvis; David G. Monet; Patrick Seitzer

doi:10.1117/12.405781

31 October 2000 Geosynchronous Earth orbital debris campaign

John L. Africano, Paul F. Sydney, David L. Talent, Eugene G. Stansbery, Kandy S. Jarvis, David G. Monet, Patrick Seitzer

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 4091, Imaging Technology and Telescopes; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.405781
Event: International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, 2000, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center (JSC) is conducting systematic searches of the Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) environment as part of an international measurement campaign under the auspices of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC). The objectives for this survey are to determine the extent and character of debris in GEO, buy obtaining distributions for the brightness, inclination, Right Ascension of Ascending Node (RAAN), and mean motion of the debris. The Charged Coupled Device (CCD) Debris Telescope (CDT), an automated 0.32 meter aperture, transportable Schmidt telescope presently located at Cloudcroft, New Mexico, is used nightly to monitor the GEO debris environment. The CDT is equipped with a CCD camera capable of detecting 17th magnitude objects in a 20 second exposure. This corresponds to a 0.6 meter diameter object having a 0.2 albedo at 36000 km. Two other larger telescopes have been used for this purpose, the United States Naval Observatory's new 1.3 meter telescope located in Flagstaff Arizona and a 0.6 m Schmidt telescope located at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) near La Serena Chile. Data reduction and analysis software used to reduce this data exploit tools developed by both the astronomical and DoD communities. These tools and data results are presented.

Citation Download Citation

John L. Africano, Paul F. Sydney, David L. Talent, Eugene G. Stansbery, Kandy S. Jarvis, David G. Monet, and Patrick Seitzer "Geosynchronous Earth orbital debris campaign", Proc. SPIE 4091, Imaging Technology and Telescopes, (31 October 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.405781

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