Perspectives in Space Surveillance

The development of deep space surveillance technology and its later application to near-Earth surveillance, covering work at Lincoln Laboratory from 1970 to 2000.

In the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union raced to develop space-based intelligence gathering capability. The Soviets succeeded first, with SPUTNIK I in 1957. The United States began to monitor the growing Soviet space presence by developing technology for the detection and tracking of man-made resident space objects (RSOs) in near-Earth orbit. In 1972, the Soviet Union launched a satellite into deep space orbit, and the U.S. government called on MIT Lincoln Laboratory to develop deep space surveillance technology. This book describes these developments, as well as the later application of deep space surveillance technology to near-Earth surveillance, covering work at Lincoln Laboratory on space surveillance from 1970 to 2000.

The contributors, all key participants in developing these technologies, discuss topics that include narrow beam, narrow bandwidth radar for deep surveillance; wide bandwidth radar for RSO monitoring; ground-based electro-optical deep space surveillance and its adaptation for space-based surveillance; radar as the means of real-time search and discovery techniques; methods of analyses of signature data from narrow bandwidth radars; and the collision hazard for satellites in geosynchronous orbit, stemming initially from the failure of TELSTAR 401. They also describe some unintended byproducts of this pioneering work, including the use of optical space surveillance techniques for near-Earth asteroid detection.

Contributors
Rick Abbott, Robert Bergemann, E.M. Gaposchkin, Israel Kupiec, Richard Lambour, Antonio F. Pensa, Eugene Rork, Jayant Sharma, Craig Solodyna, Ramaswamy Sridharan, J. Scott Stuart, George ZollingerContents
Preface ix
About the Authors          xv
Acknowledgments          xix
1            Historical Perspective    1
Antonio F. Pensa
2            Technology Development for Space Surveillance with
Narrow-Beam Radars    15
Ramaswamy Sridharan and Israel Kupiec
3            Overview of Wideband Radar Imaging Technology at MIT Lincoln
Laboratory         75
Craig Solodyna
4            Ground-Based Electro-Optical Technology Development              119
Eugene Rork
5            Technology Development for Space-Based Electro-Optical
Deep-Space Surveillance              179
Jayant Sharma
6            Technology Developments in Catalog Discovery 203
Ramaswamy Sridharan and George Zollinger
7            Characterization of Resident Space Objects         237
Ramaswamy Sridharan and Richard Lambour
8            Conjunctions and Collisions of Resident Space Objects   295
Richard I. Abbot
9            Resulting Technology Applications         329
Joseph Scott Stuart, E. M. Gaposchkin, and Robert Bergemann
Afterword          363
Index    365