An Approach to Space-Debris Optical Image Simulation Considering the Streak and Saturated Star-Background

Abstract

In present, space-object optical image simulation study is very important to the area of space technology, because it can support the development of space-object detection algorithm before the optical platforms are launched to the space and supplement the information of unusual cases which is absent in the real optical images. Although there’re many simulation methods focus on different space-object and space-surveillance platforms, this paper mainly proposed an optical image simulation approach focus on the small field-of- view and high detection sensitivity spatial imaging system for detecting space-debris. The proposed simulation method focuses on two key features streak and saturated star-background in the space-debris optical images which caused by high angular speed of space-debris and bright star respectively. Firstly, for the purpose of simulating the saturated star-background, this paper introduces an accurate star radiation calculating model by using bolometric magnitude to replace common visual magnitude. Secondly, in order to simulate the streak, an energy accumulation based linear approximation method is proposed which is more sufficient than the original gauss distribution model when simulate the streak caused by fast moving space-debris. Finally, the experiment results show the efficiency of proposed method.