Preliminary design of an Earth-based debris detection system using current technology and existing installations

Assessment of debris hazard requires the determination of debris down to mm sizes for near-Earth orbits and near-stationary points. It is necessary to obtain reasonable orbits for a statistically significant sample of the debris population. Several ground-based techniques for detection are available. Radar detection was used to obtain information of existing debris population. Another technique is optical detection. The possibilities and application of optical detection with state-of-the-art instrumentation is studied.