Slovakian Optical Sensor for HAMR Objects Cataloguing and Research

Abstract

Slovakia became the 9th ESA European Cooperative State in 2015 and the first calls to action for the Plan for European Cooperating State (PECS) were announced shortly after. The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, a part of the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia (FMPI CU), won the call and an activity with a main goal to transform a 0.7-m Newton telescope (AGO70) dedicated to amateur astronomical observations to a professional optical system for regular support of the space debris tracking and research has started. The transformation includes the necessary hardware and software modifications to the existing solution. The presented activity has been performed in cooperation with the Astronomical Institute of University of Bern (AIUB). The AGO70 has been installed at the FMPI's Astronomical and Geophysical Observatory in Modra, Slovakia (AGO) in fall 2016. There are several predefined objectives to be accomplished within the activity. First, it was imperative to adapt the low-level telescope control for the needs of space debris tracking. Second, the image processing software must have been developed in a modular way. The observation planning has been formulated according to the AGO70 system's hardware limitations with focus on GEO, GTO and GNSS like orbits. To verify the system's capabilities, the whole activity is concluded with an observation campaign measuring AIUB's HAMR (High-Area-to-Mass-Ratio) objects and public TLE objects. The quality of the system's output is monitored by the AIUB via its state-of-the-art epoch bias and astrometric accuracy analysis routines.