Two-site orbit determination: The 2003 GEO observation campaign from Collepardo and Mallorca

Abstract In September 2003 the Group of Astrodynamics of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (GAUSS) carried out a two-site optical observation campaign addressed to the orbit determination of objects in the geosynchronous region without a priori information. Two 40 cm aperture Ritchey-Chretien telescopes were employed: the f /7.5 “Collepardo Automatic Telescope” (CAT, located in Collepardo, Italy) and an f /5 tube of the “Observatori Astronomic de Mallorca” (OAM, located in Mallorca, Spain). The baseline between the sites is about 1000 km. Three second long, 1 min apart exposures were simultaneously taken in sidereal tracking mode, looking at the same arcs of the geosynchronous ring. The size of the fields of view allowed to see a few satellites in two successive frames from both sites. The Lambert theorem has been exploited to determine the orbits, averaging the data with the least square method in the case that more than 2 points were available. Of course, the longer the time interval between the positions, the lower the effect of measuring errors. Nevertheless, the only way to have quite distant points would be tracking the satellite, but following-up is typically time demanding thus not suitable for a surveillance campaign, hence not very interesting from a practical standpoint. In the paper the results of the orbit determination from the September 2003 campaign are reported. More in detail, the outcomes of some classical methods for solving the Lambert theorem, are compared with solutions based on the measurements fitted with the least squares method, with the circular orbit assumption results, with the one-site complete orbit determination and with the TLEs.