Integrity Assessment and Verification Procedure of Angle-only Data for Low Earth Orbit Space Objects with Optical Wide-field PatroLNetwork (OWL-Net)

Abstract

The Optical Wide-field patroL-Network (OWL-Net) is a global optical network for Space Situational Awareness in Korea. The primary operational goal of the OWL-Net is to track Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites operated by Korea and to monitor the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) region near the Korean peninsula. To obtain dense measurements on LEO tracking, the chopper system was adopted in the OWL-Net’s back-end system. Dozens of angle-only measurements can be obtained for a single shot with the observation mode for LEO tracking. In previous work, the reduction process of the LEO tracking data was presented, along with the mechanical specification of the back-end system of the OWL-Net. In this research, we describe an integrity assessment method of time-position matching and verification of results from real observations of LEO satellites. The change rate of the angle of each streak in the shot was checked to assess the results of the matching process. The time error due to the chopper rotation motion was corrected after re-matching of time and position. The corrected measurements were compared with the simulated observation data, which were taken from the Consolidated Prediction File from the International Laser Ranging Service. The comparison results are presented in the In-track and Cross-track frame.