Processing of Optical Telescope Observations with the Space Object Catalogue BACARDI

Kurzfassung

In a joint project of the DLR Institute for Simulation and Software Technology and DLR Space Operations and Astronaut Training develop methods for space surveillance. The main objective of the project is to develop an orbital database for objects in Earth orbit – called the Backbone Catalogue of Relational Debris Information (BACARDI). The research topics are object identification form different sensor observations, orbit determination and orbit propagation including state vector and state uncertainty. Main applications of the orbital database will be close approach prediction for collision avoidance - further on re-entry prediction, detection of satellite manoeuvres and on-orbit fragmentations. In this paper an introduction is given to the space object catalogue BACARDI. All information imported, processed and exported is stored within a relational database. A self-developed middleware provides the functionality for distributed computations on a scalable network of hardware devices. The data processing chain consists of a multi-staged algorithm of observation correlation and subsequent orbit determination. Results are presented for single processing steps by example of optical telescope observations of satellites in MEO and GEO.