Satellite Attitude from a Raven Class Telescope

• Main Authors: Nishimoto, Daron, Archambeault, David, Gerwe, David, Kervin, Paul
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Subjects: ALGORITHMS; ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES; Astronomy; Computer Programming and Software; CURVE FITTING; DATA BASES; Miscellaneous Detection and Detectors; OPTICAL EQUIPMENT; SAM(SPECTRAL ANGLE MAPPERS); SATELLITE ATTITUDE; SYMPOSIA; TASAT(TIME DOMAIN ANALYSIS SIMULATION FOR ADVANCED TRACKING); TELESCOPES; Unmanned Spacecraft

Photometric signatures of satellites collected from small aperture optical systems have the potential of providing valuable satellite information including operational status and attitude. Low cost, small aperture systems provide the capability to be transportable and therefore used in a wide variety of deployment scenarios. This research describes the benefits of prior knowledge of the satellite under consideration including general size, shape and typical material properties. By constraining the problem to a discrete set of satellite attitudes, curve matching algorithms can then be used to compare the measured photometric signature against those in the forward modeled database. TASAT simulations were used to create a database of forward modeled photometric signatures. In this paper, we explore two curve matching techniques. The first method was Kendall's Tau which compares the shapes of two curves. The second method was the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) which measures the similarity of two curves that have been processed to remove their mean values. The key findings of this study are the generation of a database of signatures to which a measured signal can be compared to extract attitude information about the satellite during a specific pass. Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference held 14-17 September 2010 in Maui, HI. The original document contains color images.