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We consider sampling and detection strategies for solar illuminated space debris. We argue that the lowest detectable debris cross section may be reduced by 10-100x by analysis of stacks of image frames collected at high rates rather than…
High power Earth and orbital-based directed energy (DE) systems pose a potential hazard to Earth orbiting spacecraft. The use of very high power, large aperture DE systems to propel spacecraft is being pursued as the only known, feasible…
Satellite imagery is widely used in many application sectors, including agriculture, navigation, and urban planning. Frequently, satellite imagery involves both large numbers of images as well as high pixel counts, making satellite datasets…
High-Frequency (HF) radar is well suited to the surveillance of low-Earth-orbit space. For large targets, a small deployable HF radar is able to match the detection performance of much larger space surveillance radar systems operating at…
With the ever growing number of space debris in orbit, the need to prevent further space population is becoming more and more apparent. Refueling, servicing, inspection and deorbiting of spacecraft are some example missions that require…
The risk of collision between resident space objects has significantly increased in recent years. As a result, spacecraft collision avoidance procedures have become an essential part of satellite operations. To ensure safe and effective…
We describe systematic ranging, an orbit determination technique especially suitable to assess the near-term Earth impact hazard posed by newly discovered asteroids. For these late warning cases, the time interval covered by the…
Utilizing the TNG50 simulation, we study two types of alignments for satellites/subhalos: 1) the alignment of their major axes with the galactocentric radial directions (radial alignment), and 2) with the motion directions (orbital…
Earth is constantly being bombarded with material from space. Most of the natural material end up being dust grains that litter the surface of Earth, but larger bodies are known to impact every few decades. The most recent large impact was…
Low Earth orbits (LEO) are known as a region of high space activity and, consequently, space debris highest density. Launcher upper stages and defunct satellites are the largest space debris objects, whose collisions can result in still…
In this paper, we consider a satellite orbiting in a Manev gravitational potential under the influence of an atmospheric drag force that varies with the square of velocity. Using an exponential atmosphere that varies with the orbital…
Large networks of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are being built using inter-satellite lasers. These networks promise to offer low-latency wide-area connectivity, but reliably routing such traffic is difficult, as satellites are very…
We investigate a new theory of the origin of the irregular satellites of the giant planets: capture of one member of a ~100-km binary asteroid after tidal disruption. The energy loss from disruption is sufficient for capture, but it cannot…
We examine the detectability and interpretation of debris trails caused by satellite disruption in external galaxies using semi-analytic approximations for the dependence of streamer length, width and surface brightness on satellite and…
Orbital debris presents a growing risk to space operations, and is becoming a significant source of contamination of astronomical images. Much of the debris population is uncatalogued, making the impact more difficult to assess. We present…
Planetary satellites are an integral part of the heirarchy of planetary systems. Here we make two predictions concerning their formation. First, primordial satellites, which have an array of distinguishing characteristics, form only around…
Since the 1980's it has been becoming increasingly clear that the Solar System's irregular satellites are collisionally evolved. We derive a general model for the collisional evolution of an irregular satellite swarm and apply it to the…
Aircraft collision avoidance systems is critical to modern aviation. These systems are designed to predict potential collisions between aircraft and recommend appropriate avoidance actions. Creating effective collision avoidance systems…
Data collected by Earth-observing (EO) satellites are often afflicted by cloud cover. Detecting the presence of clouds -- which is increasingly done using deep learning -- is crucial preprocessing in EO applications. In fact, advanced EO…
In this paper, we consider traffic offloading of integrated low earth orbit (LEO) satellite-terrestrial network. We first derive traffic offloading probability from the terrestrial network to the LEO satellite network based on the…