Applied Astronomy: An Optical Search For Space Debris At GEO

Details Applied Astronomy: An Optical Search For Space Debris At GEO Applied Astronomy: An Optical Search For Space Debris At GEO

Jul 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dda....38.1005s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #38, #10.05

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

There are over 250 active spacecraft in the geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) regime, with another 500 inactive or debris pieces in the public catalog. Their orbits are primarily perturbed by gravitational effects from the Earth, Moon, and Sun, with inclination increasing from zero degrees to 15 degrees and back to zero over a 54 year period.
We will review the dynamics of objects at GEO, and then show results from an optical survey for faint GEO debris with the University of Michigan's Curtis-Schmidt telescope at Cerro Tololo. Recently the CTIO 0.9-m was used to follow-up debris discoveries made with the Schmidt, and determine orbits and colors.
Faint GEO debris has a very different angular rate and orbital distribution than bright debris. The consensus is that these objects have high area-to-mass (A/M) and their orbits are significantly perturbed by solar radiation.
This is a classic problem of applied astronomy: using modern methods of imaging and astrometry to measure the distribution of artificial objects close to Earth which could pose a risk to operational spacecraft.
This work is supported by NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX.

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