RSOnet: An Image-Processing Framework for a Dual-Purpose Star Tracker as an Opportunistic Space Surveillance Sensor

A catalogue of over 22,000 objects in Earth’s orbit is currently maintained, and that number is expected to double within the next decade. Novel data collection regimes are needed to scale our ability to detect, track, classify and characterize resident space objects in a crowded low Earth orbit. Th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2022-07, Vol.22 (15), p.5688
Main Authors: Dave, Siddharth, Clark, Ryan, Lee, Regina S. K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aperture
Classification
convolutional neural networks
Data collection
Data compression
Design
Feasibility studies
Image processing
Low earth orbits
multi-object tracking
Normal distribution
resident space object
Sensors
space domain awareness
Space surveillance
Star trackers
Surveillance
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Summary:A catalogue of over 22,000 objects in Earth’s orbit is currently maintained, and that number is expected to double within the next decade. Novel data collection regimes are needed to scale our ability to detect, track, classify and characterize resident space objects in a crowded low Earth orbit. This research presents RSOnet, an image-processing framework for space domain awareness using star trackers. Star trackers are cost-effective, flight proven, and require basic image processing to be used as an attitude-determination sensor. RSOnet is designed to augment the capabilities of a star tracker by becoming an opportunistic space-surveillance sensor. Our research demonstrates that star trackers are a feasible source for RSO detections in LEO by demonstrating the performance of RSOnet on real detections from a star-tracker-like imager in space. RSOnet convolutional-neural-network model architecture, graph-based multi-object classifier and characterization results are described in this paper.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s22155688