Dr. John Stryjewski (CSC-ISTEF), Dan Hand (CSC-ISTEF), Dr. David Tyler (University of Arizona), Sukumar Murali (University of Arizona), Dr. Mike Roggemann (Michigan Technological University), Nick Peterson (Michigan Technological University)
Keywords: light curves, polarization
Abstract:
In recent years there as been a lot of interest in using the time history of re_ected solar light (light curves) from satellites and space debris as a means of determining shape and material composition. Most of these studies used time series analysis in an attempt to classify objects while some have used multi-spectral or spectroscopic approaches. One of the difficulties that most of these approaches had was the lack of high fidelity shape and material modeling. Here we present a high fidelity modeling approach that correctly describes the shape, material and dynamics of space objects. Furthermore, this model, in real time, correctly models reflection, emission, glint and polarization effects. We use this model to show how detection of polarization effects can help characterize both satellites and space debris. Polarization approaches have an advantage over spectroscopic or intensity based method because polarization is unaffected by the atmosphere. We present a comparison of polarization approaches for the analysis of space debris and satellites and discuss the advantages of being able to do these calculations in real time.
Date of Conference: September 14-17, 2010
Track: Modeling