Maj Donald Bédard (Royal Military College of Canada, Department of Physics)
Keywords: spectrometric measurements
Abstract:
Almost all remote spectrometric measurements obtained of artificial space objects in the last decade contained an unexpected and unexplained reddening of reflectance spectra when compared to either modelled predictions or ground truth measurements of sample spacecraft material. During the spectrometric characterization experiment of an engineering model (EM) of the CanX-1 nanosatellite, an increase of the slope of the overall reflectance curve was observed in various illumination and sensor geometries. Observation of the reddening effect such as was seen during the CanX-1 EM experiment has not been reported to have been observed in a laboratory environment before. With this in mind, a study was initiated to assess how the specular component of the spectral reflectance, from metallic surfaces and photovoltaic cells, varied as a function of changing illumination and sensor geometry. This paper presents the preliminary results of a new approach aimed at explaining the reddening effect commonly observed in remote spectrometric measurements of artificial space objects.
Date of Conference: September 13-16, 2011
Track: Poster