Star Sensor Image On-Board Processing for Orbiting Objects Detection – SPOT

This work presents the status of the study conducted by the School of Aerospace Engineering of Sapienza University of Rome in the framework of the Italian Space Agency project SPOT (Star sensor image on-board Processing for Orbiting objects deTection). The idea is to exploit star sensors to detect moving objects, which appear as streaks in the acquired image. Usually, star sensors discard information of observed moving objects against the fixed stars, losing many data that could be very useful for the Space Situational Awareness. On the contrary, SPOT processes the streaks to detect potential orbiting objects. The main factors that affect the visibility have been considered: the sensor characteristics (sensitivity, field of view, exposure time, and boresight direction), the optical properties of the observed objects, the environment influence, and the relative velocity between target and observer. The SPOT architecture consists of an On-Board Unit, which detects objects, and a Ground Unit, which processes the received On-Board data providing a database of the observations along the orbit.