A Metric Analysis of IRAS Resident Space Object Detections.
Abstract
The Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) was launched and operated during a 10-month period in 1983. The orbit was close to the MSX orbit design, but the science data were collected in a mode where the focal plane was pointing directly away from the Earth. The Space Research Institute at Groningen, Netherlands, collected approximately 139,000 tracks of data that had focal plane motion different than astronomical sources, and the IRAS Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) determined the boresite pointing of IRAS to within 20 arcsec. This report will focus on the nonastronomical detections from IRAS, many of which are Resident Space Objects (RSOs). In particular, the focus of the study is on how many are correlated to the known RSO catalogue for 1983 and the calibration and characterization of the metric accuracy for the correlated data. This study was undertaken to prepare for analysis of RSO detections from the MSX satellite, and in particular, so that automatic analysis tools designed for analysis of surveillance experiment data could be tested. The supporting analysis tools, required corollary data, and metric calibration procedure will be described, and the results of the accuracy of the IRAS ephemeris and metric RSO detections will be presented. (AN)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA302289
Entities
People
- E. M. Gaposchkin
- Joseph F. Baldassini
- Mark T. Lane
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology