Space Debris Detection in Low Earth Orbit with the Sardinia Radio Telescope

Space debris are orbiting objects that represent a major threat for space operations. The most used countermeasure to face this threat is, by far, collision avoidance, namely the set of maneuvers that allow to avoid a collision with the space debris. Since collision avoidance is tightly related to t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Electronics (Basel) 2017-09, Vol.6 (3), p.59
Main Authors: Muntoni, Giacomo, Schirru, Luca, Pisanu, Tonino, Montisci, Giorgio, Valente, Giuseppe, Gaudiomonte, Francesco, Serra, Giampaolo, Urru, Enrico, Ortu, Pierluigi, Fanti, Alessandro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collision avoidance
Collisions
Doppler effect
Frequency spectrum
Low earth orbits
Maneuvers
Multistatic radar
Radar tracking
Radio telescopes
Space debris
Space debris mitigation
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Summary:Space debris are orbiting objects that represent a major threat for space operations. The most used countermeasure to face this threat is, by far, collision avoidance, namely the set of maneuvers that allow to avoid a collision with the space debris. Since collision avoidance is tightly related to the knowledge of the debris state (position and speed), the observation of the orbital debris is the key of the problem. In this work a bistatic radar configuration named BIRALET (BIstatic RAdar for LEO Tracking) is used to detect a set of space debris at 410 MHz, using the Sardinia Radio Telescope as the receiver antenna. The signal-to-noise ratio, the Doppler shift and the frequency spectrum for each debris are reported.
ISSN:2079-9292
2079-9292
DOI:10.3390/electronics6030059