Okumura Shinichiro, Nishiyama Kota, Asami Atsuo, Urakawa Seitaro, Sakamoto Tsuyoshi, Hashimoto Nariyasu, Takahashi Noritsugu
(14) 403-415, Mar 27, 2015
6th Space Debris Workshop (December 17-19, 2014. Chofu Aerospace Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)(CAC)), Chofu, Tokyo, JapanBisei Spaceguard Center was built as a facility for the purpose of the optical observations of space debris and near Earth asteroids. Since 2000, observations have been carried out with three telescopes (1 m, 50 cm and 25 cm). Although main targets are GEO objects, the telescopes have the tracking capability for high-speed moving objects at LEO. The accuracy of the positional measurement is about 0.2-0.3 arcsec, which corresponds to the distance of 40 m at GEO. We are also working on research observations of space debris in recently. For example, the figure shows a short-term light curve of a retired satellite. Two light curves were obtained in 2012 and 2014. It shows that the rotation or tumbling status has varied in these two years.Physical characteristics: Original contains color illustrations