Payload Camera Breadboard for Space Surveillance—Part I: Breadboard Design and Implementation

Abstract

The rapid increase of space debris poses a risk to space activities, so it is vital to develop countermeasures in terms of space surveillance to prevent possible threats. The current Space Surveillance Network is majorly composed of radar and optical telescopes that regularly observe and track space objects. However, these measures are limited by size, being able to detect only a tiny amount of debris. Hence, alternative solutions are essential for securing the future of space activities. Therefore, this paper proposes the design of a payload camera breadboard for space surveillance to increase the information on debris, particularly for the under-catalogued ones. The device was designed with similar characteristics to star trackers of small satellites and CubeSats. Star trackers are attitude devices usually used in satellites for attitude determination and, therefore, have a wide potential role as a major tool for space debris detection. The breadboard was built with commercial off-the-shelf components, representing the current space-camera resolution and field of view. The image sensor was characterized to compute the sensitivity of the camera and evaluate the detectability performance in several simulated positions. Furthermore, the payload camera concept was tested by taking images of the night sky using satellites as proxies of space debris, and a photometric analysis was performed to validate the simulated detectability performance.