James Blake, University of Warwick; Paul Chote, University of Warwick; Don Pollacco, University of Warwick; Demitri Veras, University of Warwick; Andrew Ash, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory; William Feline, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory; Grant Privett, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory; Laura Pirovano, University of Surrey
Keywords: Orbital Debris, GEO Survey, GEO Detection, Light Curves, Small and Large Sensors
Abstract:
Recent anomalies and break-ups by satellites and rocket bodies have added more fragments to an already substantial population of debris in high-altitude Earth orbits. Many of these fragments are too faint to detect with small telescopes, instead requiring the superior collecting area of larger instruments.
Optical surveys of the geosynchronous (GSO) region typically undergo a balancing act between sky coverage, survey depth and cost. Large survey areas can be achieved at a reasonable cost using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, but these systems are limited to apertures around 30 cm in size. Large telescopes, with apertures exceeding 1 m, can probe the faint debris population to uncover objects at the decimetre level, but usually suffer from a small field of view (less than roughly 1 square degree) and are not available commercially at scale. As a consequence, surveys attempting to probe the faint debris population with large telescopes are often limited to targeted observations of known fragmentation events. Otherwise, a small field of view coupled with a desire to cover more sky can result in very sparse positional information for the objects detected.
In this paper, we explore the benefits of pairing a large telescope with a COTS instrument in the context of a blind survey of the GSO region. We utilise a dataset acquired in September 2018 by a 36 cm robotic astrograph, whilst synchronised to the 2.54 m Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, Canary Islands. We exploit the larger field of view of the COTS instrument to supplement the bright end of the sampled population. The shorter readout time for the astrograph reduces the deadtime between exposures and therefore enables the extraction of better-quality photometric light curves for brighter detections.
This study forms part of DebrisWatch, an ongoing collaboration between the University of Warwick and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (UK) investigating the population of GSO debris. The work presented will prelude a wider comparative analysis between the two available datasets.
Date of Conference: September 15-18, 2020
Track: Orbital Debris