The multibeam radar sensor BIRALES : performance assessment for space surveillance and tracking

Abstract

Near-Earth space has become progressively more crowded in active satellites, inactive spacecraft and debris. Consequently, an international effort is currently being devoted to improving the performance of the network of optical and radar sensors for space objects monitoring. Within this framework, the use of the novel bistatic radar sensor BIRALES is investigated in this work. The tailored orbit determination algorithm is described, with a detailed description of the transiting object trace definition method. The second part of the work illustrates the results achieved with both numerical simulations and observation campaigns. The sensor performance is assessed considering both cases of known and unknown objects. For all cases, the effect of measurement noise on each single available measurement is investigated. Finally, the results achieved during satellite Tiangong-1 re-entry observation campaign are shown.