Radar Based System for Space Situational Awareness

Kurzfassung

Very often existing space situational awareness (SSA) networks include sensors originally not designed for the purpose of space situational awareness. In addition different kinds of sensors are used which makes it even more complicated to fuse all generated data. Creating a network consisting of sensors with a homogenous data interface is therefore a reasonable objective. Technologies available for detection and tracking of objects (e.g. electro-optical sensors or radar) will be discussed with a focal point on operational availability and reliability. It will be shown that especially regarding to this aspects radar systems are the most reasonable technology to be used creating a sensor network consisting of interoperable sensors. Nevertheless, electro-optical sensors are important to generate complementary information. The DLR SMARTnet [1] generates this information in a passive way for geostationary satellites and the DLR orbital debris laser ranging station in Stuttgart [2] achieved this task in an active approach, but this paper entails to present a proposal for a network of radars configured for this purpose. The system is intended to detect and track objects that are at least as small as objects that can currently be found in the United States Space Surveillance Network (US SSN) catalogue [3] but also has the possibility to make high-resolution images of tracked objects. Furthermore potential hazards in different orbits will be evaluated and discussed in order to optimize the system in that direction. The system is supposed to be able to create an own object catalogue. Therefore repeated tracking and required capacity will also be considered. Technical criteria for detection and tracking of objects will be determined. This part of the work contains aspects like choosing adequate frequency bands for tracking and imaging of different sizes of objects. In the next step the locations for the sensors will be determined. Based on considerations about necessary infrastructure it is plausible to locate the radar systems on existing observation sites. At least possibilities for imaging radar systems will be presented, which enables the user, beside the information of size and orbit, getting an image of the object to analyse it technically. By analyzing simulations feasible approaches for such a Space Situational Awareness Network will be presented.