An Optical Survey for Space Debris in Geosynchronous Orbit

Details An Optical Survey for Space Debris in Geosynchronous Orbit An Optical Survey for Space Debris in Geosynchronous Orbit

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.5606s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #56.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.828

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The University of Michigan's Curtis-Schmidt telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory is dedicated to an optical survey for faint space debris at geosynchronous orbit (GEO) for NASA. In the public catalog in or near the GEO regime, there are over 250 active spacecraft, and more than 500 large inactive spacecraft and debris pieces.
The purpose of the Schmidt GEO survey is to statistically estimate the debris population of objects too faint to be in the catalog. One result is that objects fainter than 15th R magnitude have a very different angular rate distribution than bright objects. One possibility for some of this difference is that an unknown fraction of the faint objects have a high area-to-mass (A/M) ratio, whose orbital eccentricity and inclination are changed by solar radiation pressure. Such behavior is predicted by theoretical models (Anselmo and Pardini 2005, Liou and Weaver 2005) and seen in European observations of GEO debris (Schildknecht, et al 2005).
Our goal is to determine orbits for a complete sample of survey objects fainter than 15th R magnitude. However, the Schmidt survey observations only provide data for five minutes, which is not a long enough arc to fit a full six parameter orbit on GEO objects (mean period = 1436 min). Therefore in March, 2007, the Schmidt was used simultaneously with the CTIO 0.9-m. The Schmidt was constantly in survey mode, and as faint objects were detected, they were followed-up in real-time on the CTIO 0.9-m for orbit determination.
Objects with full six parameter orbits show a range of eccentricities, inclination, and mean motion. We will discuss this result, as well as a summary of conclusions from the Schmidt GEO survey.
This project is supported by grants to the University of Michigan from NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office.

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