Using sunlight to save satellites from a fate of ‘space junk’

EurekAlert  June 16, 2020
Satellites are almost always illuminated by the sun, apart from short transitions to Earth’s shadow. According to researchers at Purdue University the light that a satellite reflects can help reveal the solution to a structural malfunction. The proposed method calls for using telescopes on Earth to collect the light reflected by a satellite or one of its parts. Changes in the brightness of a “dot” over time are recorded as light curves and processed and used to extract information about an object’s appearance or rotational state. However, the more complex an object is, the harder it is to estimate or solve for what the object looks like using light curves, the results also can be ambiguous, and identifying and characterizing human-made objects with light curves is mathematically complex, But even partial answers from light curves could provide valuable information about a satellite…read more. Video