GMV/ISON COMBINED OPTICAL CAMPAIGNS

GMV is now providing SST services for collision avoidance in GEO using third-party optical sensor data. These services include conjunction analysis and refinement, and calibration capabilities for ranging stations. For the provision of these services GMV cooperates with a set of optical data providers, being the ISON network one of the largest ones.
ISON has been working already for more than 10 years now and is using adjusted technology for space object observations that has been tested with GLONASS and GPS satellites observations and the accuracy of the measurements obtained for GEO objects has been checked by independent experts. ISON represents now one of largest and powerful ground systems specialized in observation of space objects. Observatories of ISON provide coverage for the whole GEO belt (i.e., telescopes are installed in all four Earth’s hemispheres). The ISON optical network counts now with 73 telescopes in 33 observation points of 13 countries.
This paper is devoted to describe the results of the combined activities between GMV and ISON in three aspects (catalogue maintenance, conjunction analysis and calibration of ranging stations) and that those three tasks can be performed successfully with GMV’s software and the ISON network.
A battery of observation campaigns has been executed during 2016 in order to analyse and to characterise the results using actual observations from the ISON telescope network and ranging data from satellite-operators.
The paper can be considered as a report of all the campaigns and it is focused on the following topics:
- ISON network coverage: devoted to demonstrate the global coverage of the ISON network.
- Orbit determination capabilities and accuracy: devoted to analyse the orbit determination performances, including the following particular cases:
o Accuracy of optical-only orbits depending on various aspects: number of telescopes, number of passes, length of passes, etc
o Station and transponder calibration through the combination of optical data and ranging data.
o Manoeuvre estimation and orbit accuracy in periods with manoeuvres.
o Survey activities and achieved performances with survey-only data
- Collision risk assessment: devoted to conjunction analyses between operational satellites and debris.
- End of life operations: devoted to prove that the telescope network can also be used for special operations
The following table shows a summary of the tracking campaigns executed indicating the internal satellite Id associated. For confidentiality reasons the satellite Id of the satellites is not indicated.
- April 2016
o A: 07/04/2016-18/04/2016
o B: 07/04/2016-18/04/2016
o C: 15/04/2016-20/04/2016
- May 2016
o D: 09/05/2016-17/05/2016
o E: 06/05/2016-17/05/2016
o F: 06/05/2016-17/05/2016
o G: 31/05/2016-08/06/2016
o H: 08/06/2016-16/06/2016
- July 2016
o I: 26/06/2016-08/07/2016
o J: 26/06/2016-08/07/2016
o K: 01/07/2016-08/07/2016
o L 01/07/2016-08/07/2016
- August 2016
o M: 06/08/2016-14/08/2016