Center for Astrophysics Research and Technologies Seminar Series
GPU-based Optical Space Surveillance with Small Telescopes
Presented by Pete Zimmer, JTMA
Near-Earth space continues to grow in importance for its scientific, defense and economic utility. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in assets currently in Earth orbit and many more planned for launch in the next few years. For each one of those active missions, there is even more inactive material -- space junk! -- and a golfball size piece of orbital debris can wreck your billion dollar satellite. Finding and cataloging such debris and other hazardous objects is of growing interest as access to space becomes cheaper and easier.
J.T. McGraw and Associates, LLC, in collaboration with UNM, has built and is operating two proof-of-concept wide-field imaging systems to test novel techniques for blind surveillance of low Earth orbit. The imaging systems are built from off-the-shelf optics and detectors resulting in a 350mm aperture and a 6 square degree field of view. For satellite streak detection, field of view is of critical importance because the maximum exposure time on the object is limited by its crossing time and measurements of apparent angular motion are better constrained with longer streaks. The current match of the detector to the optical system is optimized for detection of objects at altitudes above 450km, which for a circular orbit corresponds to apparent motions of approximately 1 deg./sec. Using our GPU-accelerated detection scheme, the proof-of-concept systems have detected objects fainter than V=12.3, which approximately corresponds to a 24 cm object at 1000 km altitude - at better than 6 sigma significance, from sites near and within Albuquerque, NM.
2:00 pm, Thursday, April 2, 2015
PAIS-2540, PAIS
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