- 1School of Engineering,, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom (g.jones.3@pgr.bham.ac.uk)
- 2School of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
- 3School of Geography, Earth, and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
The proliferation of space objects is increasingly becoming a large concern, with mega-constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO) exponentially increasing active spacecraft numbers, now over eleven thousand. The Pervasive Sensing group at the University of Birmingham is exploring a method of opportunistic observations of these spacecraft from a dedicated satellite equipped with a high-resolution sub-THz inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging payload [1]. The work includes orbit identification, optimised conjunction analysis and encounter parametrisation. We also demonstrate the use of a novel radar simulation technique – the Graphical Electromagnetic ISAR Simulator for Sub-THz waves (GEIST) [2] – to synthesise large datasets of radar images from diverse perspectives. This is linked with the Pervasive Sensing group’s development of heuristic and ML-based classification techniques [3] to identify satellite anomalous behaviour and/or damage to external infrastructure.
[1] E. Marchetti et al., "Space-Based Sub-THz ISAR for Space Situational Awareness—Concept and Design," in IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 1558-1573, June 2022, doi: 10.1109/TAES.2021.3126375
[2] G. Jones et al., "Novel Simulation Method for Sub-THz ISAR Imaging of Space Objects," 2024 21st European Radar Conference (EuRAD), France, pp. 272-275, doi: 10.23919/EuRAD61604.2024.10734967.
[3] M. Coe et al., "Segmentation and Classification of Sub-THz ISAR Imagery," 2024 International Radar Symposium (IRS), Poland, pp. 233-238, ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10645054
How to cite: Jones, G., Coe, M., Beesley, L., Hart, T., Karikari, E., Pope, F., Gashinova, M., and Alconcel, L.-N.: Opportunistic LEO spacecraft observation with space-borne sub-THz ISAR imaging, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-5152, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-5152, 2025.
