Space Debris Detection in Low Earth Orbit with the Sardinia Radio Telescope
Giacomo Muntoni ; Luca Schirru ; Tonino Pisanu ; ...Giuseppe Valente ; et al.
Aug - 2017
DOI: 10.3390/electronics6030059

journal : Electronics

Volume : 6 ; Issue : 3
type: Article Journal

Abstract
Space debris are orbiting objects that represent a major threat for space operations. The most used countermeasure to face this threat is, by far, collision avoidance, namely the set of maneuvers that allow to avoid a collision with the space debris. Since collision avoidance is tightly related to the knowledge of the debris state (position and speed), the observation of the orbital debris is the key of the problem. In this work a bistatic radar configuration named BIRALET (BIstatic RAdar for LEO Tracking) is used to detect a set of space debris at 410 MHz, using the Sardinia Radio Telescope as the receiver antenna. The signal-to-noise ratio, the Doppler shift and the frequency spectrum for each debris are reported.

keywords : space debris; Sardinia Radio Telescope; Doppler radar