Commercial LEO Tracker...

Shown above, twin 10 inch f/5s packaged into our Severe Environment Mount for LEO and Orbital Debris Tracking.

Brad Ehrhorn – RC Optical Systems, Inc.
Dan Azari – Telescope Controls, LLC.

April 2007 - RC Optical Systems, Inc. and Telescope Control Systems, LLC., have been developing an autonomous LEO tracker that allows for unattended acquisition and imaging of LEOs using low cost COTS equipment. The test setup from which we are gathering data consists of an RCOS Elevation over Azimuth (EL/AZ) Gimbal, RCOS 20 inch f/8 Ritchey-Chrétien and Telescope Controls motion control system.

Central to success of LEO acquisition and open loop tracking is accurate modeling of Gimbal and Telescope misalignments and flexures. Using Pro-TPoint and a simple automated mapping routine, we have modeled our 20RC to achieve pointing and tracking accuracies within a population standard deviation of 1.4 arc-sec. Once modeled, an RCOS Gimbal Tracking System can easily and quickly be calibrated to the sky using a simple 6-10 star map to solve for axis tilt and collimation coefficients.

Acquisition of LEO satellites is accomplished through the use of a wide field imager. Satellite identification is accomplished by detecting a stationary centroid against a background of moving stars in two consecutive images using a standard aperture photometric flux algorithm. Using a COTS CCD camera, exposure times of 50-100ms is adequate for most LEO satellites. If satellite detection fails, the sky is searched first by varying epoch within +/- 5 seconds, and then by epoch and inclination. We have found this technique successful in the majority of cases. Once the satellite has been detected, centering within the tracking and imaging arrays is accomplished through solving a best fit of epoch and inclination offsets against the ephemeris data. Active tracking is available at this time if desired.

Autonomous Open Loop Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite and Orbital Debris Tracking ( See our paper presented at AMOS 2007 ) using an RCOS 20RC and EL / AZ Gimbal.

NORAD 23483 Track Date: May 1, 2007 SL-19 DEB SATELLITE DEBRIS Launch date: 1994-12-26 Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR)	NORAD 01359 Track Date: June 4, 2007 TITAN 3A TRANSTAGE R/B ROCKET BODY Launch date: 1965-05-06 United States of America (US)	NORAD 21221 Track Date: June 4, 2007 SL-12 R/B (2) ROCKET BODY Launch date: 1991-04-04 Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR)
NORAD 18214 Track Date: June 10, 2007 COSMOS 1869 OKEAN SATELLITE Launch date: 1987-07-16 Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR)	NORAD 29671 Track Date: June 10, 2007 COSMOS 2426 GLONASS-M NAV SATELLITE Launch date: 2006-12-25 Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR)	NORAD 21938 Track Date: June 10, 2007 SL-8 R/B ROCKET BODY Launch date: 1992-04-15 Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR)

 

Sub arc/second pointing!

T-Point Pro is licensed to RCOS by Patrick Wallace