Simulating ground-based measurements of spectral signatures of resident space objects

Abstract

Hyperspectral remote sensing has been proposed as a method to extract quantitative information about resident space objects (RSO) for space domain awareness. Measured spectral signatures can be used to extract information about material composition, satellite pose, satellite classification, and other quantities about the state of a RSO. This is particularly of interest to extract information of unresolved RSOs (URSO) as the high spectral resolution can help us resolve the object spectrally even though it is not resolved spatially. A challenge is the limited amount of spectral data available for algorithm development, testing and validation. Physics-based modeling and simulation tools such as the Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Image Generation (DIRSIG™) can help us develop an understanding of RSO spectral signatures and to generate spectral signature databases for design, testing and validation of exploitation algorithms. This paper presents preliminary results of simulated resolved and unresolved imagery of the DirecTV-10 and AMC-1 satellites using DIRSIG™. Simulation results illustrate the spatial, spectral and temporal variability of the spectral signatures for both multi-spectral and hyperspectral signatures as well as mixing phenomena when going from resolved to unresolved imagery. Simulated data can help us develop an understanding of RSO behavior that can inform design, development and testing of algorithms for image exploitation for SDA.