Speaker
Description
The safe and sustainable use of space requires a comprehensive understanding of the current populations of RSOs. However, the population of RSOs in Earth orbit is increasing rapidly, and while some of these objects are well characterised and tracked, a significant fraction of them have little to no tracking data. Often this is due to their small size which makes them difficult to observe via traditional means. To solve this issue, we require new techniques to better observe and characterise the population. In an attempt to better probe the small and faint end of the RSO population we have developed a blind stacking technique, designed to recover faint, moving targets in astronomical images. This technique is adaptable to any orbital regime and can detect moving targets from multiple orbits in a single dataset. Its key feature is that it can recover targets that are too faint for standard, single-frame extraction without requiring forehand knowledge of orbits. In this presentation I will describe the technique and highlight some of our current successes. The method has been evaluated on simulated data and has recently been positively applied to an INT dataset targeting GEO objects for which it has successfully improved the detection threshold. Additionally, I will discuss the potential improvements planned for the technique, including a more robust extraction of the orbital parameters of recovered targets.
