Increasing reports of hazards to spacecraft owing to debris, the replacement of a window on one of the space shuttles (STS-7) following an impact, and recent observational work on the debris population prompt this paper. The creation, design, development, and testing of equipment and techniques to observe moving objects by passive optical means is investigated. With regard to artificial satellites, asteroids, and meteors, the state-of-the-art observing systems is created for both the U.S. Air Force and NASA. One of the by-products of research effects has been the measurement of the untracked artificial satellite population in both the near-Earth and the deep-space realms. This paper consolidates hundreds of hours of observation on space debris, briefly describes observing techniques, quantifies the numbers of small bodies in space relative to the actively watched artificial-satellite population, and estimates the numbers of detectable objects from 1 cm (near Earth) to 20 cm (near-stationary distances). There is a lot of debris in orbit-at least 11 times the tracked population of satellite in near Earth orbit and at least 25%, and probably 50%, of the deep-space population. Moreover, the deep space debris is situated in all the common deep space orbits.
Satellite Debris: Recent Measurements
1986
7 pages
Report
No indication
English
Astronautics , Spacecraft Trajectories & Flight Mechanics , Space Safety , Debris , Space environments , Hazards , Space surveillance systems , Artificial satellites , Asteroids , Deep space , Earth orbits , Earth(Planet) , Meteors , Moving targets , Numbers , Orbits , Reprints , Space shuttles , Spacecraft , Tracking
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