Skip to main content

Bi-Static Radar Measurements Using ESA's 15 Meter Ground Stations

Sessler, Gunther M. A. 1, Smeds, Boris 1, Krag, Holger 1, Flohrer, Tim 1, Martinez Gil, Rebeca1
Affiliation data not available1

Document details

Publishing year2009 PublisherESA Publishing typeConference Name of conference5th European Conference on Space Debris
Pagesn/a Volume
5
Issue
1
Editors
H. Lacoste

Abstract

A recent upgrade in two of ESA's 15 meter ground stations, lead to the possibility to perform bi-static radar measurements to track un-cooperative targets. This paper presents the results of such a measurement campaign, in which range-rate data was recorded using ERS-2 / Envisat satellites as radar targets. By post-processing this range-rate data an orbit can be determined. The accuracy of this orbit can be evaluated by comparing it to the operational orbit. As a reference also TLE (two-line elements) data are processed and compared to the operational orbit. This shows that the orbit based on our measurement gives an improvement to the TLE based orbit in along-track and radial accuracy, yet suffering from an out-of-plane degradation.

Preview