TAMPA, Fla. — Latest star-tracking sensors within the works would enable all manner of satellites to maintain a watch out for hazardous orbital debris too small to detect from the bottom.
Star trackers use the known position of stars to assist keep satellites properly oriented and pointing in the best direction.
Belgian spacecraft component specialist Arcsec is working with Portuguese space traffic management enterprise NeuraSpace on a debris-spotting star tracker they expect to demo in space by 2025.
Adding data from Arcsec’s sensors to the pool of knowledge NeuraSpace gathers from public sources and partnerships with ground telescope providers would enable the Portuguese enterprise to trace much smaller orbital debris, in line with NeuraSpace chief operating officer Chiara Manflett.
Meanwhile, Jacksonville, Florida-based Redwire has developed a star tracker it says will be used to detect debris, slated to be on orbit in the following three to 6 months after entering production this summer.
Other manufacturers are also looking into developing star trackers that satellite operators could use for debris detection alongside attitude and orbit control.
More tools for debris hunters
Denver-based, national security-focused satellite maker True Anomaly announced plans in August to make use of Redwire SpectraTRAC star trackers and cameras, which might work in concert for spacecraft dedicated to chasing, and imaging, uncooperative objects up close.
Redwire senior vp Don Wesson declined to reveal other customers for SpectraTRAC, but said the thing detection feature enables space domain awareness applications including debris detection, rendezvous and proximity operations, and space situational awareness.
Customers can go for the thing detection feature at time of purchase or anytime in the long run, he said, even during their mission and without being paired up with a Redwire camera.
While Arcsec CEO Tjorven Delabie said enabling debris-monitoring on Arcsec star trackers already in orbit may very well be done with a software upgrade from the bottom, he said the corporate continues to be determining how best to reallocate the star tracker’s internal computing power to accommodate this capability.
The Belgian company’s work to upgrade star trackers follows a recent 1.3 million euro ($1.4 million) grant from the European Innovation Council.
Converting trackers
Star trackers Arcsec and others provide can already pick up non-celestial objects passing through their field of view, but this data is commonly discarded to conserve onboard computational power.
Luis Gomes, CEO of small satellite specialist AAC Clyde Space, said operational constraints are one among the essential reasons his company has not sought so as to add the aptitude to its star trackers.
Most star trackers operated for attitude control don’t generate imagery on a routine basis, Gomes said, and operators only run them in that mode when things go improper since it is labor-intensive.
“I suppose it could be possible to alter the algorithms on [star tracker] processors to also detect debris,” he said, “but that shouldn’t be the very first thing I might consider doing with our limited computational resources.”
Arcsecc would wish to persuade star tracker customers who don’t track debris as a part of their essential mission to feed this data into NeuraSpace’s platform — either through latest orders or by retrofitting satellites already in orbit via software upgrades.
Arcsec has delivered 50 star trackers since its founding in 2020, mostly to industrial cubesats as much as 150 kilograms in low Earth orbit (LEO), and two have been launched to space thus far.
“It’s a really small cost for them” so as to add the debris-tracking capability to their star tracker, Delabie said, “but it surely is a little bit of a price when it comes to data budget.”
He said Arcsecc is looking into various incentives, including compensating star tracker customers for collecting and sharing debris data with NeuraSpace.
Giving a satellite a debris-monitoring role would improve the operator’s brand image, he added.
Arcsec’s partnership with the Portuguese enterprise provides one other strategy to convert star tracker users into debris watchdogs.
“If one among our customers were to have Arcsec sensors onboard, then they’d get a greater service,” NeuraSpace’s Manflett said, because insights would come from their very own sensors and not only the broader network.
A NeuraSpace customer with a compatible star tracker would improve conjunction evaluation and maneuver suggestions from the space traffic management platform.
NeuraSpace recently announced it’s serving customers that collectively control greater than 250 satellites in orbit, including one operated by Earth commentary provider Dragonfly Aerospace.
Along with industrial satellite operators, NeuraSpace is looking for to enroll satellite manufacturers, subsystem providers, insurance carriers, regulators, and policymakers to its platform.
Improving accuracy
Because star trackers are typically optimized to detect vivid stars, their ability to detect dark debris particulates is proscribed.
Under perfect conditions, Arcsec’s star trackers should give you the chance to choose up debris in LEO right down to three centimeters depending on its reflectivity, Delabie said, while currently available systems are only in a position to catalog objects right down to around 10 centimeters accurately.
Redwire’s Wesson said SpectraTRAC’s object-detection capabilities are also depending on the brightness of the reflected object — influenced by its size, shape, and distance — and would perform in an analogous manner to Arcsec star trackers under ideal conditions.
Even a tiny piece of space debris poses a threat to space missions and assets.
In 2016, The European Space Agency said a particle a couple of millimeters size hit one among two 10-meter-long solar panels on its Copernicus Sentinel-1A Earth commentary satellite, damaging an area 40 centimeters in diameter and causing a small, albeit manageable lack of power.
A collision with a similar-sized particle generally is a life-ending event for smaller cubesats.
Although manufacturers similar to SpaceX are working to make their satellites less reflective to cut back light pollution, Delabie said he expects these efforts will proceed to concentrate on surfaces facing Earth, and never all of the angles Arcsec sensors would view.
Much more rudimentary observations would improve orbit calculations for improving space safety, in line with Arcsec and NeuraSpace, as ventures including NorthStar, Vyoma, and Digantara plot dedicated constellations with higher sensors to trace debris.
Leveraging equipment operators are already taking with them to space also guarantees a faster strategy to add debris-tracking data nodes into the combination.