The process of material aging in space has been traditionally studied using laboratory experiments and onboard experiments on the International Space Station. However, these experiments either miss crucial physics or require the materials to be held on the spacecraft and returned to Earth for analysis, where exposure to air changes the properties of the aged materials. This work aims to provide a means for measuring the reflectance spectrum of spacecraft materials, and their variations with time, using ground-based observations of the spacecraft while it is on orbit. We employ the technique of myopic deconvolution of ultra-broadband (Δλ=600nm), short-exposure (“speckle") images of an object to provide a 3-D hyperspectral recovery of the target. This approach leverages the wavelength dependence of how light travels through the atmosphere and is diffracted in our instrument. We use numerical simulations to show that we can expect to successfully recover a hyperspectral image of a simple satellite observed with a 3 m class telescope and a typical sCMOS detector through moderate turbulence. The resulting hyperspectral image exhibits high spatial resolution and low to moderate spectral resolution. The actual spectral resolution depends on the signal-to-noise ratio of the data and the expected spectral complexity of the materials’ spectra. Our results provide a solid numerical proof of concept validation for improving the identification of materials on orbiting satellites using resolved ground-based observations. This study represents the first serious suggestion that the proposed technique will work effectively when applied to real-world data. These findings not only demonstrate the potential of ultra-broadband speckle imaging for characterizing satellites, but also pave the way for future studies of material aging in the space environment.
Monitoring Spacecraft Materials Using Hyperspectral Speckle Imaging
J Astronaut Sci
10.12.2024
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Monitoring Spacecraft Materials Using Hyperspectral Speckle Imaging
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