Abstract
A method with high detection rate, low false-alarm rate, and low computational cost is presented for removing stars and noise and detecting space debris with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR>3) in consecutive raw frames. The top-hat transformation is implemented firstly to remove background, then a masking technique is proposed to remove stars, and finally, a weighted algorithm is used to detect the pieces of space debris. The simulation samples are images taken by 600 mm ground-based telescope. And a series of simulation targets are added to the image in order to test the detection rate and false-alarm rate of different SNRs. The telescope in this paper is worked in “staring target mode.” The experimental results show that the proposed method can detect space debris effectively with low false-alarm by only three frames. When the SNR is higher than 3, the detection probability can reach 94%, and the false-alarm rate is below 2%. The running time of this algorithm is within 1 second. Additionally, algorithm performance tests in different regions are also carried out. A large set of image sequences are tested, which proves the stableness and effectiveness of the proposed method.
Highlights
Space debris refers to the man-made nonfunctional object of all sizes in near-earth space, which has been produced since the first launch of the artificial Earth satellite [1]
The results show that the detection rate is as high as 100% and the false alarm rate is 0
A method is presented in this paper for the detection of space debris in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) orbits
Summary
Space debris refers to the man-made nonfunctional object of all sizes in near-earth space, which has been produced since the first launch of the artificial Earth satellite [1]. Thomas Schildknecht has proposed a masking technique [10,11,12,13], in which a template frame ( called mask) is employed to mask all background stars on the search frames1 This method has been successfully applied to the Zimmerwald 1-m ZIMLAT telescope, which tracks space debris with its expected motion during the exposure and is repositioned between the exposures in order to observe the same field in the sky all the time [1]. Sun has put forward a detection pipeline through median filtering and mathematical morphology [14], in which six frames are employed to extract objects, and the detection ability for faint objects is improved Both detection accuracy and detection efficiency are important to the space debris detection system.
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