John Hackett (COM DEV Ltd.), Lisa Li (COM DEV Ltd.)
Keywords: SSA
Abstract:
The Sapphire payload has been developed by COM DEV for Surveillance of Space on a moderate budget for MDA Systems Ltd. and the Canadian Department of National Defence, and is scheduled to fly in 2012. This paper presents a brief overview of the payload, along with its potential Space Situational Awareness utility as a hosted payload on GEO satellites. The Sapphire payload orbits on a dedicated satellite and hence the payload was not required to actively point. For a hosted payload version of Sapphire, the spatial coverage would likely need to be enhanced by incorporating a two dimensional scan capability. Simulations of the hosted payload version of Sapphire performance are presented, including spatial coverage, approximate RSO sensitivity and approximate RSO positional accuracy.
Date of Conference: September 11-14, 2012
Track: Poster