Satellite Technologies for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Space systems play an important and integral role in every facet of our daily lives, including national security and resource management. Therefore, it is critical to protect our valuable assets in space. In recent years, the growing numbers of resident space objects (RSOs) have become a significant concern worldwide. In the proposed NSERC Alliance program, we propose to examine a novel approach to develop technologies for space surveillance and space situational awareness (SSA-continuous monitoring of conditions and threats in space). In particular, we propose to use wide field-of-view (FOV), low resolution imagers for space-based detection, tracking, identification and characterization of RSOs, including natural/artificial, friendly/adversarial space assets, debris, near-Earth asteroids, space-related threats, and space hazards; and to support the upcoming SSA Microsatellite mission. Magellan plans to perform mission-level management as well as the design, manufacture, assembly, and test of the microsatellite bus at its Winnipeg facilities. As a research partner, our team at York will contribute to the initial background research and core technology development, outlined in this proposal. The proposed Alliance program consists of two main components: Phase 1 - Background Research (first 18 months) and Phase 2 - Mission Design (Years 2 through 5). In the first phase, we propose to examine three key areas of satellite technologies for SSA, namely (1) Resident Space Object (RSO) observation prediction, (2) tracking algorithm implementation on FPGA and (3) RSO identification. These technologies can operate on any spacecraft with optical imaging hardware, including commercial star trackers commonly used for attitude determination. In the second phase, we will develop, test, integrate and demonstrate the proposed payload for upcoming microsatellite mission. This leverages on-going research in collaboration with DRDC and other academic and industry partners with the ambitious goal to provide Canadian-made solutions to SSA from space.