Jang-Hyun Park (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Young-Jun Choi (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Jung-Hyun Jo (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Hong-Kyu Moon (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Hong-Suh Yim (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Young-Sik Park (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Young-Ho Hae (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Sun-Youp Park (Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute), Jim Choi (UST), Ju-Young Son (UST)
Keywords: SSA, Optical system
Abstract:
We present a prototype system developed for optical satellite tracking and its early test observation results. The main objective of the OWL (Optical Wide-field patroL) network is to get orbital information for Korean domestic satellites using optical means only and to maintain their orbital elements. The network is composed of 5 small wide-field telescopes deployed over the world. Each observing station is operated in fully robotic manner from receiving observation schedule to reporting the result, and controlled by the headquarter located in Daejeon, Korea, where orbit calculation and observation strategy will be determined. We developed a compact telescope system for robotic observation and easy maintenance. The telescope is 0.5m of aperture diameter with Rechey-Cretian configuration and its field of view is 1.1 deg. It is equipped with 4K CCD with 9um pixel size, and its pixel scale is 1.2 arcsec/pixel. A chopper wheel with variable speed is adopted to get more points in a single shot. The CCD camera and all the rotating parts (chopper wheel, de-rotator, and filter wheel) are integrated into one compact component called a wheel station. Each observing station is equipped with a fully automatic dome and heavy duty environment monitoring system. We could get an image every 20 seconds and up to ~100 trail points in a single exposure. Each point is time-tagged by ~1/1000 second precision. For one of best cases, we could estimate satellite position with RMS ~ 0.5km accuracy in the along-track with only 4 exposures (~100 points). The first system was installed at the Mongolian site after completing verification test at the testbed site in Daejeon, Korea. The second and third system will be installed in the end of this year.
Date of Conference: September 9-12, 2014
Track: Space Situational Awareness