Multi-Aperture Optical System of Photon Counting in the Image for Aberration-Free Space Debris Observations through a Turbulent Atmosphere (Part II)

• Published in: Rocket-space device engineering and information systems Vol. 8; no. 3; pp. 20 - 36
• Main Authors: Sviridov, K. N., Tyulin, A. E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• ISSN: 2409-0239; 2587-9057
• DOI: 10.30894/issn2409-0239.2021.8.3.20.36

The paper considers the principles of construction and application strategies of the ground optical system for space debris monitoring protected by the patent of the Russian Federation for the invention. The aim of this invention was to increase the diffraction resolution of the formed images of a small space object and improve the accuracy of restoration of the module undistorted by the atmosphere and phase of its spatial spectrum. To achieve this goal, formation of atmospherically distorted images of a space object is carried out by a coherent matrix of M moving telescopes of the diameter D in the process of space-time aperture synthesis, which directs the combined subbeams from moving telescopes along the tracks to the center of the matrix, where the stationary base is placed, which performs both coherent combination of subbeams and detection of formed series of N images with their subsequent registration and processing. During statistical processing of moduli and phases of spatial spectra of registered images, the island nature of the optical transfer function (OTF) of matrix along the ellipses of coherence and its semi-island in the radial direction extending from the center of the spatial frequency domain to the cutoff frequency of the synthesized aperture of the diameter Dэ is taken into account. The positive effect of using this invention is that the coherent operation of the matrix provides a gain in the diffraction resolution of Dэ/D times (Dэ/D 1), and an increase of D/r0 times, where r0 is the atmospheric fluctuations correlation radius, the accuracy of restoration of the undistorted by the atmosphere module and phase of the space spectrum from the object by the proposed smoothing procedure allows reducing by the same factor (D/r0 1) the required number of N registrations in series reducing the total monitoring time.