Measurement of Artificial-Satellite Spectra with a Small Telescope

摘要

In the surveillance of space context, the satellites positions must be reacquired frequently to maintain an accurate knowledge of their orbital parameters. However, it is not rare to acquire several satellites in the same image (particularly in the geostationary belt) and it is not possible to identify each one of them. In such a case, important errors can be introduced into the database if wrong associations are made. Therefore, it is really important to be able to identify each satellite to make valid updates. For this end, the experiment described in this report tried to demonstrate that 1) satellites identification can be made using their spectral signatures and 2) these spectrum can be acquired with a small telescope. However, even if difference in color could be observed, the measuring system was not sensitive enough to really demonstrate this hypothesis and too few observations were done (with only the brightest geostationary satellites) during the period where the telescope was available for this experiment. This report presents the few results that were obtained, explains the encountered difficulties and makes recommendations about the minimal equipment requirement that should be used if the experiment should be done again.