Update on the attitude state and motion of space debris from ground-based observations at the SwissOGS.

Rodriguez-Villamizar, Julian; Vananti, Alessandro; Schildknecht, Thomas; Zilkova, Danica; Silha, Jirí (2023). Update on the attitude state and motion of space debris from ground-based observations at the SwissOGS. In: Proceedings of 2nd ESA NEO and debris detection conference. Darmstadt, Germany.

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The unprecedented growing number of human-made ob-
jects in the near-Earth space environment calls for im-
mediate action. Current initiatives propose the direct re-
moval of selected targets or the so-called on-orbit servic-
ing aiming to extend the life cycle of selected missions.
For the design of such missions, the understanding of the
attitude and the attitude motion of the target object be-
comes imperative. Ground-based observations may help
providing evidence about the tumbling state of observ-
able targets employing different observation techniques.
The Swiss Optical Ground Station and Geodynamics Ob-
servatory (SwissOGS) Zimmerwald, located near Bern,
Switzerland, and operated by the Astronomical Insti-
tute of the University of Bern, provides measurements
to maintain a database containing the synodic period of
diverse resident space objects being estimated from the
observed lightcurve. The measurements may be acquired
using CCD or sCMOS detectors mounted on different
telescopes with the possibility to include spectral filters in
specific standard photometric systems. In addition, avail-
able laser ranging measurements to uncontrolled targets
carrying retroreflectors may serve as an independent tech-
nique to validate and complement results obtained using
optical-passive systems.
In this work, we will focus on observations gathered
for specific targets that were main subject in previ-
ous scientific studies, such as Envisat, Topex/Poseidon,
Jason-2 and ERS-2, from which we were able to col-
lect measurements and infer information about its at-
titude and attitude motion. We highlight the acquisi-
tion of daylight lightcurves for Envisat, the simultane-
ous acquisition of passive and active optical measure-
ments for Topex/Poseidon and ERS-2, the most recent
light curves extracted using the newly systems available
at the SwissOGS, which consist of a sCMOS detector and
the Shelyak LISA spectrograph mounted on the Zimmer-
wald Multiple Applications Instrument (ZimMAIN) tele-
scope.

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