Tom Kelecy, Boeing LTS, Mark Skinner, Boeing Research & Technology
Keywords: debris shedding, characterization, dynamics
Abstract:
There is plausible speculation that retired satellites near geosynchronous orbit are the source of a debris population that was passively shed over time due to environmental effects. Recent initiatives intended to characterize these defunct satellites via analysis of non-imaging observations have established the ability to derive some of their physical and dynamic attributes. For long term observing of objects, what kinds of changes might one be able to detect that might be attributed to shedding? Are there any attributes common to both the shed piece of debris and the parent object that might allow one to tie the two together? The work presented attempts to shed some light on these questions by establishing several plausible shedding scenarios which include appropriate dynamics, shapes and materials, and uses appropriate bi-directional reflectance distribution functions and Long Wave Infrared (LWIR) models to create a simulated time history of observations that can be examined to analyze the shedding phenomenon. The goal of this work is to provide some insight into what characterization changes one might attribute to shedding when observing a “parent†object over an extended period. The results show that astrometric, photometric, albedo-area product, and multi-wavelength brightness observations each provide unique characterization attributes which, when combined, allow one to infer shedding phenomena.
Date of Conference: September 20-23, 2016
Track: Non-Resolved Object Characterization