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

Abstract

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.

From Space Debris to NEO, Some of the Major Challenges for the Space Sector

“…Radars have been the preferred ground-based system, in particular to monitor LEO, as they can operate independently day and night as well as in all meteorological conditions. However, most radar telescopes are optimized for astronomical observations rather than debris tracking and so bi-static systems have also been used to improve performance, and some have shown a capability to detect objects down to 1 cm at 100 km (Muntoni et al, 2017). Similarly, systems combining laser ranging and passive optical tracking have been demonstrated to achieve good accuracy in determining the position of objects (within 10 m).…”

Orbit Determination of Resident Space Objects Using the P-Band Mono-Beam Receiver of the Sardinia Radio Telescope

“…The antenna is used as a receiver in the Italian BIRALET radar system for space debris observations in P-band [1,13,20]. The front-end employed for space debris radar campaigns is the dual-feed L-P receiver (see Figure 2), a cryogenically cooled (typically less than 20 K) coaxial receiver with two channels, one for the P-band (with a receiver frequency response at 305-410 MHz) and the other one for the L-band (at 1300-1800 MHz).…”

“…Alternatively to the space debris dedicated channel of Figure 3, a simplified acquisition chain could be used, where the two channels of the P-band receiver, one for each polarization, typically used for radio astronomical measurements, are combined and simply connected to a spectrum analyzer (see Figure 4). This measurement setup has been used during the first space debris experiments with the SRT in April 2014 [1]. In this way, it is possible to see in real time the echo radar with a resolution bandwidth less than 20 Hz, but data processing could be poor, mainly due to the limitations of the spectrum analyzer, i.e., the slow frequency sweep for low resolution bandwidths, thus preventing all data saving in real time.…”

“…In near-Earth space, such as Low Earth Orbit (LEO), between 200 and 2000 km of altitude, this debris is more significant than natural meteoroids. The presence of this kind of objects generates two types of risk: the in-orbit collision risk for every manned and unmanned spacecraft and the risks from reentering debris [1].…”

“…The group of dedicated radar sensors involved in the European SST network includes two Italian radars based on two different radio telescopes as a receiver (RX): the BI-static RAdar for LEo Survey (BIRALES) system [11,12] and the BI-static RAdar for LEo Tracking (BIRALET) system [1,13,14]. Each of these systems, which are included in the European monitoring program for Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST), uses the same transmitter (TX), named Radio Frequency Transmitter (TRF), located in Sardinia in the region "Salto di Quirra" (Lat.…”