Small Orbital Stereo Tracking Camera Technology Development

Any exploration vehicle assembled or Spacecraft placed in LEO or GTO must pass through this debris cloud and survive. Large cross section, low thrust vehicles will spend more time spiraling out through the cloud and will suffer more impacts.Better knowledge of small debris will improve survival odds. Current estimated Density of debris at various orbital attitudes with notation of recent collisions and resulting spikes. Orbital Debris Tracking and Characterization has now been added to NASA Office of Chief Technologists Technology Development Roadmap in Technology Area 5 (TA5.7)[Orbital Debris Tracking and Characterization] and is a technical gap in the current National Space Situational Awareness necessary to safeguard orbital assets and crews due to the risk of Orbital Debris damage to ISS Exploration vehicles. The Problem: Traditional orbital trackers looking for small, dim orbital derelicts and debris typically will stare at the stars and let any reflected light off the debris integrate in the imager for seconds, thus creating a streak across the image. The Solution: The Small Tracker will see Stars and other celestial objects rise through its Field of View (FOV) at the rotational rate of its orbit, but the glint off of orbital objects will move through the FOV at different rates and directions. Debris on a head-on collision course (or close) will stay in the FOV at 14 Km per sec. The Small Tracker can track at 60 frames per sec allowing up to 30 fixes before a near-miss pass. A Stereo pair of Small Trackers can provide range data within 5-7 Km for better orbit measurements.