Kaitlyn Raub, The MITRE Corporation; Gregory Krzystyniak, The MITRE Corporation
Keywords: cislunar, xgeo, small telescopes, imaging, observatory, ground-based opticals, optical sensors, satellites, telescopes, spacecraft
Abstract:
The space industry is prospering from the recent success of the first segment of the Artemis program to the upcoming Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative preparing for nine excursions to the Moon. Consequently, it is imperative to adapt observation procedures used for spacecraft orbiting nearer to the Earth for the area of space beyond geosynchronous orbit (GEO), or XGEO. However, there are longstanding challenges surrounding XGEO, such as the complexity of the three-body problem and its subsequent orbits, as well as the difficulties in sensing objects many times more distant than GEO. These challenges render most traditional spacecraft tracking, detection, imaging, and observation generation techniques unusable.
This report details MITREs research into performing ground-based optical observations of XGEO spacecraft. Included are the results of MITREs XGEO collection campaign on more challenging targets, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Artemis-1 Mission, and others. Discussed are the finalized telescope observing procedures used during the observation campaign on how to track, detect, and image targets over the span of XGEO space. Also included is information regarding updated data processing techniques to handle object correlation without the use of traditional methods, such as two-line element sets and standard propagation models, like SGP4.
Date of Conference: September 19-22, 2023
Track: Cislunar SDA