Research on space-based optical surveillance's observation strategy of geostationary-orbit's pitch point region

Abstract

In order to surveillance the geostationary (GEO) objects, including man-made satellites and space debris, more efficiently, a space-based optical surveillance system was designed in this paper. A strategy to observe the pinch point region was selected because of the GEO objects’ dynamics features. That strategy affects the surveillance satellites orbital type and sensor pointing strategy. In order to minimize total surveillance satellites and the revisit time for GEO objects, a equation was set. More than 700 GEO objects’ TLE from NASA’s website are used for simulation. Results indicate that the revisit time of the surveillance system designed in this paper is less than 24 hours, more than 95% GEO objects can be observed by the designed system.