Innovative system of very wide field optical sensors for space surveillance in the LEO region

We present the results of a large scale simulation, reproducing the behavior of a data center for the build-up and maintenance of a complete catalog of space debris in the upper part of the low Earth orbits region (LEO). The purpose is to determine the achievable performances of a network of advanced optical sensors, through the use of the newest orbit determination algorithms developed by the Department of Mathematics of Pisa (DM). Such a network was designed and proposed to the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) framework by Carlo Gavazzi Space SpA (CGS), Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), DM and Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione (ISTI-CNR). The latest developed orbit determination algorithms were used to process simulated observations from the proposed network. In particular two innovative methods for preliminary orbit determination based on the first integrals of the Kepler problem were compared, by using them to process the same data. In both cases, the results showed that it is possible to use a network of optical sensors to build up a catalog containing more than 98% of the objects with perigee height between 1100 and 2000 km, and diameter greater than 8 cm. Such a catalog is obtained in just two months of observations. However, such results depend upon specific assumptions on the sensor and on the software technologies.