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Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)

Space situational awareness (SSA) refers to collecting, analyzing, and keeping track of detailed knowledge of resident space objects (RSOs) in the space environment. With the rapidly increasing number of objects in space, the need for SSA grows as well. Traditional methods rely heavily on imaging RS...

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Autores principales: Kunalakantha, Perushan, Baires, Andrea Vallecillo, Dave, Siddharth, Clark, Ryan, Chianelli, Gabriel, Lee, Regina S. K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10384062/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37514889
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23146595
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author Kunalakantha, Perushan
Baires, Andrea Vallecillo
Dave, Siddharth
Clark, Ryan
Chianelli, Gabriel
Lee, Regina S. K.
author_facet Kunalakantha, Perushan
Baires, Andrea Vallecillo
Dave, Siddharth
Clark, Ryan
Chianelli, Gabriel
Lee, Regina S. K.
author_sort Kunalakantha, Perushan
collection PubMed
description Space situational awareness (SSA) refers to collecting, analyzing, and keeping track of detailed knowledge of resident space objects (RSOs) in the space environment. With the rapidly increasing number of objects in space, the need for SSA grows as well. Traditional methods rely heavily on imaging RSOs from large, narrow field-of-view (FOV), ground-based telescopes. This research outlines the technology demonstration payload, Resident Space Object Near-space Astrometric Research (RSONAR)—a star tracker-like, wide FOV camera combined with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to image RSOs from the stratosphere, overcoming the disadvantages of ground-based observations. The hardware components and software algorithm are described and evaluated. The eligibility of the payload for SSA is proven by the image processing algorithms, which detect the RSOs in the images captured during flight and the survival of the COTS components in the near-space environment. The payload features a low-resolution, wide FOV camera coupled with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based platform that houses the altitude and time-based image capture algorithm. The newly developed payload in a 2U-CubeSat form factor was flown as a space-ready payload on the CSA/CNES stratospheric balloon research platform to carry out algorithm and functionality tests in August 2022.
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spelling pubmed-103840622023-07-30 Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Kunalakantha, Perushan Baires, Andrea Vallecillo Dave, Siddharth Clark, Ryan Chianelli, Gabriel Lee, Regina S. K. Sensors (Basel) Article Space situational awareness (SSA) refers to collecting, analyzing, and keeping track of detailed knowledge of resident space objects (RSOs) in the space environment. With the rapidly increasing number of objects in space, the need for SSA grows as well. Traditional methods rely heavily on imaging RSOs from large, narrow field-of-view (FOV), ground-based telescopes. This research outlines the technology demonstration payload, Resident Space Object Near-space Astrometric Research (RSONAR)—a star tracker-like, wide FOV camera combined with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to image RSOs from the stratosphere, overcoming the disadvantages of ground-based observations. The hardware components and software algorithm are described and evaluated. The eligibility of the payload for SSA is proven by the image processing algorithms, which detect the RSOs in the images captured during flight and the survival of the COTS components in the near-space environment. The payload features a low-resolution, wide FOV camera coupled with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based platform that houses the altitude and time-based image capture algorithm. The newly developed payload in a 2U-CubeSat form factor was flown as a space-ready payload on the CSA/CNES stratospheric balloon research platform to carry out algorithm and functionality tests in August 2022. MDPI 2023-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10384062/ /pubmed/37514889 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23146595 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Kunalakantha, Perushan
Baires, Andrea Vallecillo
Dave, Siddharth
Clark, Ryan
Chianelli, Gabriel
Lee, Regina S. K.
Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)
title Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)
title_full Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)
title_fullStr Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)
title_full_unstemmed Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)
title_short Stratospheric Night Sky Imaging Payload for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)
title_sort stratospheric night sky imaging payload for space situational awareness (ssa)
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10384062/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37514889
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23146595
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