Abstract
This paper proposes a low budget solution to detect and possibly track space debris and satellites in Low Earth Orbit. The concept consists of a space-borne radar installed on a cubeSat flying at low altitude and detecting the occultations of radio signals coming from existing satellites flying at higher altitudes. The paper investigates the feasibility and performance of such a passive bistatic radar system. Key performance metrics considered in this paper are: the minimum size of detectable objects, considering visibility and frequency constraints on existing radio sources, the receiver size, and the compatibility with current cubeSat's technology. Different illuminator types and receiver altitudes are considered under the assumption that all illuminators and receivers are on circular orbits.
Highlights
In the past 60 years, since the launch of Sputnik 1, the number of objects in orbit around the Earth has increased tremendously
In 2009, the European Space Agency started a program for a European Space Situational Awareness System, which required the design of a radar system able to detect small targets with size in the order of one decimetre in LEO [3]
Where Pt is the transmitted power by the system’s illuminator, Gt and Gr are the gains in transmission and in reception, respectively, λ is the wavelength, σ is the radarcross section (RCS) of the target, Ls (≤ 1) is a loss factor, which includes transmitter loss, propagation loss, receiver beam-shape loss, and signal processing losses
Summary
In the past 60 years, since the launch of Sputnik 1, the number of objects in orbit around the Earth has increased tremendously. In 2009, the European Space Agency started a program for a European Space Situational Awareness System, which required the design of a radar system able to detect small targets with size in the order of one decimetre in LEO [3]. Among all sensors deployed to detect an track space debris radar systems represent an important contribution for their ability to provide high detection probabilities at very large ranges in addition to a range of target’s characteristics. Jayasimha and Jyothendar in [5] show the capability to detect small space debris by using a large-antenna earth-station communicating with a geo-stationary satellite, exploiting self-interference cancellation. A novel radar system for the detection of very small space debris, which may allow the development of target tracking and classification capabilities, is proposed.
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