Starlink satellites might annoy astronomers, but at least they're easy to spot
Space debris tracking specialist Neuraspace added another optical telescope to extend satellite tracking over the Southern Hemisphere.
The telescope is located in Chile and looks for all the world like an observatory perched on top of a container. Its Northern Hemisphere counterpart is installed at the Beja air base in Portugal.
Neuraspace has high hopes for the new telescope, which can acquire more than one image per second for low orbits and track objects as small as 10 cm in diameter. According to Neuraspace, "This precision reduces the uncertainty level for positional errors to less than 100 meters within a single orbital revolution," which the company says meets the 2023 ESA Space Debris Mitigation Requirement.
The Beja telescope has already produced more than 300,000 measurements of space objects in orbits from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Geostationary within its first three months, and Neuraspace expects the telescope in Chile to be more productive thanks to the clear nights in the region.
Clear nights are important since the telescopes are optical, although Neuraspace also pulls in data from other providers to build up a picture of what is whizzing around in orbit to advise customers when it might be a good time to move a spacecraft and when things can be left alone.
Neuraspace CEO Chiara Manfletti told The Register that one goal of the new telescope was to give Neuraspace more autonomy and control over its services and products.
"They also expand the amount of data already provided by other providers and allow the reduction of uncertainties associated with the orbital path of satellites with more frequent and timely updates," she said.
"Plus, we can use them during LEOP [launch and early orbit phase] and nominal operations for detection of anomalies and orbital parameters maintenance, train new machine learning applications, and for dedicated observation."
Starlink is complicated for astronomy telescopes, because the high brightness of Starlink satellites is a hindrance that can ruin their images of the cosmos.
Neuraspace has also partnered with Elecnor Deimos to enhance its space debris tracking capabilities. Considering the criticism heaped on constellations such as Starlink for polluting the night sky, we wondered what impact the increasing traffic levels would have on Neuraspace's telescopes.
Addressing these concerns, Manfletti explained, "Starlink is complicated for astronomy telescopes, because the high brightness of Starlink satellites are a hindrance that can ruin their images of the cosmos.
"However, in our case, we track Earth orbiting satellites, so the brighter the satellite, the easier it is to track."
"Our telescopes are used for tracking every kind of spacecraft or space object, and the increasing traffic accentuates the need for these tracking systems in order to produce accurate catalogues and orbital information for an ever-growing catalogue of resident space objects," she added.
Space debris is a growing issue, and the demand for services from Neuraspace and other Space Traffic Management organizations demonstrates that the problem is unlikely to go away any time soon.
Despite the propensity of some users to stick their fingers in their ears and chant "la la la, I'm not listening" or describe concerns about the issue as a "silly narrative" as the launch cadence of satellites continues to increase. ®