OPS Forum Tracking debris: ESA's optical ground station 18.01.2008

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife


R. Jehn, H. Klinkrad, H. Krag, T. Flohrer and R. ChocSpace Debris Office

ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany

OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 1

Observatorio del Teide in Izaña, Tenerife, Spain

OGS

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Overview• History and Principal Objective• Technical description• Observations• Other interesting applications• Remote Control (Demonstration by Tim)


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ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife HistoryIdea in the late eighties

Decision to build taken in 1993

MOU between ESA and IAC signed in Dec 1993

OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008

Construction completed in 1996

Inauguration by Spanish royals and former ESA director of Telecommunications (R. Collette) on 30 June 1996

First light in 1997

SILEX Experiment between SPOT4 and ARTEMIS

50 Mbps laser link

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First Image Transmitted by SILEX

30 November 2001 17:45 Lanzarote, Canary Islands, in the Atlantic ocean west of Africa, the first image trans-mitted via optical intersatellite link from SPOT4 to ARTEMIS and then to SPOTIMAGE in Toulouse, France via ARTEMIS’ Ka-band feeder link

The Optical Ground Station (OGS)

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1-Meter Zeiss Telescope of the OGS

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Telescope mounting: English mount parallactic• Primary mirror: ∅ 1016 mm, f/4

Ritchey-Chrétien (RC) system:• Focal length: 13.3 m, f/13• Field-of-view: ∅ 45 arcmin

Space debris system plus CCD camera mounted in Cassegrain focus:• Focal length: 4.474 m, f/4.4• Field-of-view: 41 x 41 arcmin

Coudé system:• Focal length: 39.1 m, f/38• Field-of-view: ∅ 8 arcmin

Schematic Drawing of the Zeiss-Telescope

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ESA 1-m Telescope

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Optical Observations• ESA CCD Mosaic:

– Mosaic of 4 CCDs– 2048 x 2048 Pixel

CCDs– 2 amplifiers/CCD– total 8 readout

channels12s readout time

– <5 e- readout noise– Liquid nitrogen

cooled (few e-/h dark current)

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Needles in the Haystack• Two GEO

Objects– 19 mag– ~ 15 cm

diameter– Automated

on-line processing (>120 frames per hour)

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Simultaneous Scanning of 2 Declination Stripes

tracking

repositioning sidereal rate13

AIUB

Slid

e 14

Astronomical Institute University of Bern

OGS Observation Statistics

Repartition of Observation Time

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Years

Obs

erva

tion

Hou

rs

Follow-up ObservationsGTO SurveysGEO Surveys

ESA 2006 GEO/GTO SurveyContinuous program, ~80 nights per year

Detections (Jan 2006 - Dec 2006)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Magnitude

Freq

uenc

y

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

2

Sens

itivi

ty

correlateduncorrelatedSensitivity 99

uncorrelated

40 cm

60 cm

15 cm

10 cmcorrelated

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ESA 2006 Survey - i vs Ω

Orbital Elements (Jan 2006 - Dec 2006)

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

-180 -120 -60 0 60 120 180

R.A. of Ascending Node [°]

Incl

inat

ion

[°]

correlateduncorrelated

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i vs Ω 2001

17

i vs Ω 2002

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i vs Ω 2003

19

i vs Ω 2004

20

i vs Ω 2005

21

AIUB

Slid

e 22


New Debris Class

Eccentricity vs Mean Motion (Jan 2002 - Dec 2006; elliptical orbits)

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

Mean Motion

Ecce

ntric

ity

uncorrelatedcorrelatedvapo = 15"/svapo = 10.5"/svapo = 7.5"/svapo = 5"/s

UCT: 621 CT: 100

AIUB

Slid

e 23


Area-to-Mass Ratios

Area-to-Mass Ratio (134 Uncorrelated Objects)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56

Area to Mass Ratio [m2/kg]

Freq

uenc

y

A /m for GEO s/c ~ 0.015 m2/kg

Results of the optical observations of the GEO ring with the ESA Telescope

Aug/Sept 1999GEO

Jan – Jul 2001GEO

Jan – Dec 2002

GEO/GTO

Jan – Dec 2003

GEO/GTO

Jan – Dec 2004

GEO/GTO

Jan – Dec 2005

GEO/GTO

Jan – Dec 2006

GEO/GTO

Frames 5’400 65’000 81’800 66’000 49’500 59’500 70’000

Scanned Area 895 deg2 11'200 deg2 13'700 deg2 10'600 deg2 7’800 deg2 8’800 deg2 9’800 deg2

Total Obser-vation Time

13 nights / 49 h

82 nights / 548 h

96 nights / 691 h

88 nights / 559 h

70 nights / 417 h

85 nights / 495 h

95 nights / 580 h

GTO / Follow – / – – / 18 h 200 h / 71 h 245 h/103 h 145 h / 93 h 205 h/141 h 234 h/216 h

Correlated detections

180 2’023 1738 1121 599 708 808

Correlated objects

56 448 392 337 266 443 288

Uncorrelated detections

348 1’587 1676 1195 896 922 1040

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The Space Debris Problem

1121 known objects in GEO (Dec 2006): tip of the iceberg

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Reorbiting practices from 1997 to 2007

‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘07

1 -

-

-

1

Drift orbit (marginal) 1 1 2 3 3 10

8

12

1

1

5

8

19

-

1

-

7

6

‘06 Total

Left at L1 1 7 5 3 5 1

16

2

1

-

5

5

13

2 27

Left at L2 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 13

Left at L1/L2 - - - 2 - - - 3

Drift orbit (too low) 6 6 4 2 6 5 7 54

Drift orbit (above 275 km)

6 6 4 3 2 3 9 60

Total 15 22 15 11 14 11 19 167

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Other Interesting Applications of the OGS


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QIPS Inter-Island Experiment

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Entanglement-based quantum communication over 144 kmR. Ursin1, F. Tiefenbacher1,2, T. Schmitt-Manderbach3,4, H. Weier4, T. Scheidl1,2,

M. Lindenthal2, B. Blauensteiner1, T. Jennewein2, J. Perdigues5, P. Trojek3,4, B. Ömer6, M. Fürst4, M. Meyenburg6, J. Rarity7, Z. Sodnik5, C. Barbieri8, H. Weinfurter3,4 and A. Zeilinger1,2

Quantum entanglement is the main resource to endow the field of quantum information processing with powers that exceed those of classical communication and computation. In view of applications such as quantum cryptography or quantum teleportation, extension of quantum-entanglement-based protocols to global distances is of considerable practical interest. Here we experimentally demonstrate entanglement-based quantum key distribution over 144 km. One photon is measured locally at the Canary Island of La Palma, whereas the other is sent over an optical free-space link to Tenerife, where the Optical Ground Station of the European Space Agency acts as the receiver. This exceeds previous free-space experiments by more than an order of magnitude in distance, and is an essential step towards future satellite-based quantum communication and experimental tests on quantum physics in space.

1Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Vienna, A-1090 Vienna, Austria 2Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-1090 Vienna, Austria 3Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, D-85748 Garching, Germany 4Department für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians University, D-80799 Munich, Germany 5European Space Agency, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands 6Business Unit Quantum Technology, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, A-1220 Vienna, Austria 7Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UB, UK 8Department of Astronomy, University of Padova, I-35122, Italy



High-Precision Tracking Calibration with the ESA Tenerife Telescope

S. PallaschkeJ. of the Braz. Soc. Mechanical Sciences, 1999

“The ESA Tenerife telescope with its accurate CCD camera provides a good mechanism to verify the performance of single station systems and to re-calibrate them, if necessary”

For MARECS positional accuracy of 180 m instead of previously 500 m could be obtained.


SD-Observations at OGS seen from software point of view

• Old environment (Sun/Solaris) currently being replaced by PC/Linux• Key components:

Level-1Controls telescope,

camera, meteo, data acquisition and storage

Interfacing to hardware componentsTime synchronizationGUI (also for non-SD

users)

Processing SystemOff-line at AIUB,

determination of orbits and object properties

On-line at OGS, identification of follow-up candidates

Planning ToolOff-line planning of

space debris surveysOn-line planning of

immediate follow-ups by operator

Short Term Plans

ObservationUnits

Orbits




users)










users)







Short Term Plans

ObservationUnits

Orbits

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Level-1 Architecture

Remote link: Sequence ModeCommands

Remote link: High PriorityCommands

Shared Memory link

User Interaction

File / Pipe link

Use

r

Cam

era

Ser

ver

Sto

rage

Ser

ver

Tele

scop

e S

erve

r

L1C

Adv. User /STP

Parser

L1GUI

Planning Tool

Image Viewer

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Acknowledgements

Walter FluryZoran SodnikThomas SchildknechtJyri KuuselaAndrea Kerruish
