Dr. Robert (Lauchie) Scott, DRDC Ottawa, Captain Kevin Bernard, DRDC Ottawa, Stefan Thorsteinson, Calian Inc
Keywords: Sapphire, NEOSSat, Space based space surveillance, SSA
Abstract:
One of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) science experiments of the NEOSSat mission is to learn the practicalities of combining space-based metric observations with the Sapphire system. To answer this question, an experiment was performed observing clustered Canadian geostationary satellites using both Sapphire and NEOSSat in early 2016. Space-based tracking data was collected during tracking intervals where both NEOSSat and Sapphire had visibility on the geostationary objects enabling astrometric (orbit determination) and photometric (object characterization) observations to be performed. We describe the orbit determination accuracies using live data collected from orbit for different collection cases; a) NEOSSat alone, b) Sapphire alone, and c) Combined observations from both platforms. We then discuss the practicalities of using space-based sensors to reduce risk of orbital collisions of Canadian geostationary satellites by proactively tasking space based sensors in response to conjunction data warnings in GEO.
Date of Conference: September 20-23, 2016
Track: Instrumentation & Optical Surveillance