The Image Processing System for Ultra-Fast Moving Space Debris Objects

The ever-increasing number of space debris objects on the Earth’s orbit presents a danger to existing functional satellites and human infrastructure. These objects need to be tracked to be documented and catalogued. The paper addresses the development of an image processing and data reduction pipeline to process space debris tracking observations from an optical passive sensor. The pipeline starts from the raw, un-calibrated camera frames and ends with the formation of “tracklets”, i.e. consecutive series of celestial positions of the objects of interest and possibly an identification of these objects based on a reference catalogue. The paper is, on one hand, improving existing software modules, and, on the other hand, adding a series of new modules to the pipeline. The validation of the system’s results in both astrometry and photometry and proves that it is one of the few capable of observing and processing low-Earth orbit objects.