A team of researchers from the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) is developing low-cost equipment that will allow the detection of space debris.
The project “Space debris algorithms in satellite constellation images for the characterization and orbital determination of debris”, by Joel Filho, PhD student in Physics Engineering at the Department of Physics (DF) at FCTUC, has just won a grant from the Agency European Space Agency (ESA) worth 90 thousand euros.
«We are developing a method to identify and characterize space debris in images, based on open source detection algorithms (open source, in Portuguese) and determine their orbits for use onboard satellites, making use of the images they use to determine its orientation in Space, images that cannot be stored, but from which information regarding space debris will be extracted before being erased», reveals Joel Filho.
The growing concentration of space debris poses an increasing risk to space activities. Currently, it is known that there are around 35 thousand objects with more than 10 centimetres (cm) in diameter orbiting the Earth, with only the orbits of around 90% of them known, and there are also around a million, with sizes between 1 and 10 cm, almost all of them to be catalogued, and it is estimated that there are still around 130 million objects, between 1 mm and 1 cm, to be tracked.
According to Nuno Peixinho, a researcher at the DF and the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA), «It is precisely for these reasons that the study of space debris is today, and increasingly, a priority area in space sciences, and FCTUC is also involved in this”, he states, explaining that “current ground-based radars and optical telescopes, used for detecting and tracking space debris, are limited by their sensitivity, implying low size limits for the debris, providing a catalogue with a very small amount of the total. Furthermore, it is difficult to obtain precise information about the orbital location of these objects».
Thus, the idea is to develop equipment consisting of minicomputers with low-cost cameras, and the detection algorithm that is being developed by the doctoral student. Low-cost cameras have already been tested from Earth to space with the aim of understanding whether they are capable of detecting the trail left by satellites, which is very similar to space debris, and the results are quite promising.
This research is being developed under the guidance of Nuno Peixinho, Paulo Gordo, from the company Synopsis Planet and CENTRA, and Rui Melício from the University of Évora. Joel Filho will carry out a phase of his thesis project at ESA’s European Space Operations Center (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany, where he will have the opportunity to work directly with Tim Flohrer, director of the Space Debris Office. from ESA.
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