Magellan Aerospace Ltd.

Published purpose

There are around 20,000 human-made Resident Space Objects (RSOs) in orbit around Earth. This includes functioning satellites, as well as non-functional pieces of debris, and these numbers are continuing to rise. It is important to track the location of RSOs in order to prevent potential collisions and damage to functioning satellites. Currently, only small portions of the sky can be monitored by space-based RSO detectors, and Earth-based detectors are limited by cloud cover and daylight cycles. Magellan Aerospace proposes to adapt commercial star trackers, a type of sensor used for high-accuracy pointing in satellites, to detect and track RSOs. Using star trackers is an attractive solution, since almost every satellite in orbit could contribute to the RSO database using existing onboard hardware with no interruption to the satellite's main mission. This technology would greatly enrich the RSO monitoring database and can lead to reduced incidence of RSO collisions through improved monitoring and early warnings.