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I am currently working with a university team in designing a cubesat. I would like to propose to the team that we design a satellite that is able to take pictures of other satellites orbiting nearby. I am scouring the internet for some answers to determine if this has potential and would like to ask for more informed perspectives on feasibility.

Currently I am researching questions such as:

(Note, I am not asking you to answer these, just take these as context.)

  1. How is a dead satellites physical orientation (ie what face of the satellite is making the most contact with the earths atmosphere) determined?
  2. What past missions were truly successful in taking photos of a satellite, what was the purpose of the mission?
  3. Can one use IR cameras to get more information such as how much fuel is left onboard the dead satellite?
  4. Why is this not useful? What are some options in getting the footage (fast camera, tracking, etc)?

Instead, if there are other issues or questions I should be addressing now, please help by pointing them out.

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    $\begingroup$I think your primary problem is rendezvous and station keeping. A defunct satellite will most likely be tumbling. If it is a functioning satellite, the owner likely won't appreciate the near collision approach and may take evasive maneuvers. Its the same problem as trying to photograph a 2 year old: you can't catch up to them and if you do, they won't sit still.$\endgroup$
    – Woody
    CommentedJan 22 at 1:32
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    $\begingroup$Satellites with this task typically are put in orbits much higher than LEO, have large and powerful telescopes or other sensors, and/or are highly maneuverable (and also highly classified). All these things are incompatible with a university cubesat, and lacking those things you are much better able to image satellites with (relatively) cheap equipment from the ground.$\endgroup$CommentedJan 22 at 6:50
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    $\begingroup$This post lists four questions, then states that you're not asking anyone to answer those questions. Could you please rephrase it and clearly state you are not asking anyone to answer those before you list those questions?$\endgroup$
    – gerrit
    CommentedJan 22 at 11:39
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    $\begingroup$For our bachelor thesis, we've designed a cubesat that's supposed to orbit near another satellite and take pictures of it. The thesis is here.$\endgroup$
    – Joooeey
    CommentedJan 23 at 13:13
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    $\begingroup$Wouldn't the necessary close approach be regarded as hostile action because it poses a physical danger -- intended or not -- to the target (which is presumably worth a lot of money and has important functions, as opposed to your comparatively disposable cubesat)? I mean, satellites are known to change course to avoid close encounters.$\endgroup$CommentedJan 23 at 16:16

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There are some really big challenges to implementing a satellite-on-satellite spy satellite.

Most of the time, satellites are pretty far from each other. A shell of LEO 100 km thick encompasses about 600 million cubic kilometers. If you put 10,000 objects in it, on average they're say 50 km apart, and usually moving 1 to 10 km/sec with respect to each other.

With some effort, you can calculate that for frequent observations, you're going to need a good telescope (you can model it after the Planet Labs' Doves with a ~10 cm aperture Cassegrain-like system in a 3U cubesat and a high speed, high pixel count image sensor (bigger angular area covered = less demand on pointing)), and see just how short of a shutter speed you'll need or other tracking tricks) to get a non-blurry image.

You can also start doing some conjunction estimates - how often other satellites will pass close enough to your cubesat to get detailed and clear images.

Further, once you determine a list of telescope pointing directions and times that may result in successful photographs, you can start looking into how one might communicate (i.e. uplink) that set of instructions to the cubesat.

Also see:

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    $\begingroup$There's also the issue that some governmental entities may well object to a satellite designed to go take photos of other satellites, no matter what you say you intend to do with it.$\endgroup$CommentedJan 22 at 19:53
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Main challenge: fuel for maneuvers

Assuming a dead satellite, it's likely going to be tumbling. Since a cubesat limits your max lens size (and thereby aperture) and the tumbling limiting your exposure time significantly, you need to be quite close (by space standards) for a sharp picture.

This means maneuvering close, which costs a lot of fuel (assuming you're not content on just imaging one target per cubesat). Docking Maneuvers (and up until the last few (hundred) meters you're doing something quite similar) and their calculations are well understood and easy* to calculate. Now, you don't need a precise docking maneuver with almost fully equalized orbits but just a short timeframe where your relative speeds are almost equal, so that's some fuel saved. The math is easy, the execution is as well, but it's not cheap.

[Edit: Since the satellite is already dead, time likely is of low concern so the (somewhat) new ion-thrusters could be a way to make large amounts of manoeuvring at cost possible since their tradeoff is laughably low thrust vs incredible fuel efficiency, aka if you've got time you can manoeuvrer for really cheap (money and weight-wise)]

Use-Cases: Gathering intelligence on foreign (spy) satellites. That's more or less about it. Maybe gathering intel on faulty satellites (if external damage is detected through other, cheaper means) and if designed-for-maintenance space telescopes (or satellites) like Hubble come back into fashion a (compared to a full on service mission) cheap cubesat checking out the external maintenance required could become a valid use-case.

Regarding your non-title questions:

  1. That depends on the satellite. Some have clearly designed supposed-to-be-earthbound sides, others are oriented relative to the sun, others again don't care (a minority, mostly super old sats). With sufficient time close to the target, several pictures (or even video) the tumbling orientation can be determined (it's not gonna be chaotic but around some axis). Some satellites may also be stabilized by their form relative to solar wind. How to determine their orientation: Place and orient your cubesat relative to the target and the earth, calculate the angles and there you are (orientation relative to earth). Then check the targets design docs (or infer them from your photos) to determine how they are oriented relative to how they should be.

  2. (besides probably several classified ones): A picture of Hubble taking from the Space-Shuttle (though after a servicing mission, aka rendevousz and calling the Space Shuttle a satellite is stretching it a fair bit): Vaguely remember news a couple years past of a military (either US or China photographing the other side's satellite) but I can't find it now.

  3. Not really. Sure, for some satellite types with the specs documented and through on-ground experimentation you maybe could calculate the thermal mass remaining through the fluctuation on a day cycle but with so many variables and fuel tanks usually being exceptionally well insulated the accuracy would be abysmal in the best of cases.

  4. Why would it be useful? What use is the image of a dead satellite (except for intelligence on foreign spy satellites) ? Ground based or orbital telescopes can capture good-enough images for far far cheaper (at least until now, because the high initial cost is offset by a far longer lifespan and the capability to capture other images as well). So the additional value of a close-up image is in almost all cases less than the cube-sat would cost (both in development and deployment)

5.: :/ I only read at the end that you're not looking for answers to those questions...

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    $\begingroup$Your "laughably" edit makes a good point! If one was doing "space archaeology" and meandering around LEO collecting information on historical incidents and items using low thrust but very high Isp propulsion, one would have a use case that is pretty unique and perhaps a spaceflight first!$\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    CommentedJan 24 at 9:01
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One challenge is going to find an insurance provider who is willing to cover your liability for this mission. At least for an afforable price.

In order to properly take pictures of another satellite, you need to get very close to it. Getting close to another satellite bears the risk of accidental collision. The owner of the other satellite aren't going to be very happy about this. And other users of low-earth orbit won't like that either, because such a collision would generate debris endangering their current and future missions as well.

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    It's an almost impossible requirement. Without doing any calculations I offer the following based loosely on my 60+ years of taking photos.
    Calculations could follow but only if substantial interest shown.

    A cubesat limits available lens size.
    With a small emough sensor a say 125x zoom (relative to say 24mm 35mm sensor equivalent) MAY be possible.
    Mass will be in the 1kg + to ++ range.

    So focal length of say around 24mm x 125 = 3000 mm equivalent focal length.
    eg Nikon P1000 .

    For a 3000 pixel wide sensor a 1 metre wide object would be 1 pixel wide at about 12 km (E&OE) .

    That's not very far to get a pixel resolution :-( Moving anywhere near that distance from space-type distances away, unless you can get there with a small burn and serendipitous orbital parameters, and lots of waiting, is not viable for a cube sat.

    Image quality will degradewith decreasing sensor size

    NB: E&OE - above is a quick attempt. I or someone else with more time can easily check & refine the optical calculations.

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    • $\begingroup$If we take the time to custom-build our 100 mm, f/10 camera with a 6 micron (or less) per pixel sensor, I get a resolution of 6 cm at 10 kim at 500 nm.$\endgroup$
      – uhoh
      CommentedJan 24 at 5:57
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    Marco!

    Cubesat!

    The most famous use case for a camera-equipped cubesat looking at another spacecraft historically was not in LEO.

    For "use cases" in LEO, except for spying, I don't think there are many unless you find a dedicated and willing target.

    Answers to How common is it for spacecraft to have "selfie" capability? will support my assertion that these days, most spacecraft (both deep space, and those in Earth orbit) are equipped with several "selfie cameras" that monitor key items like antenna and solar panel deployment.

    For malfunctioning or recently disabled spacecraft that have physical conditions that can not be identified from the ground, there might be, from time to time, one specific satellite where it would be helpful to get a clear image that can't be easily gotten from Earth. Chances are it would not be in a conveniently accessible orbit, but maybe.

    In that case you might be able to image and identify a damaged area (where did the meteor or debris hit?) or ruptured tank, or leaking fuel cloud sparkling in the sunlight, etc.

    If it's tumbling, usually one can record the brightness variation from the ground and get some idea how fast and around which axis, but it is possible that if you are close enough to keep it in your field of view long enough, you could add information about it's rotational state.

    But day-to-day spacecraft generally have a lot of sensors and cameras and back-up communications with low-gain antennas, so a lot of what might have been usefully imaged from a cubesat 10-20 years ago is no longer useful now.

    Visibility of spacecraft calculation

    Several people have noted in answers and comments that a cubesat sized telescope might have to get pretty close to another satellite to "inspect" it, and @RussellMcMahon's answer questions whether a cubesat-based camera or telescope could even resolve a satellite at a safe distance. Let's check the math using angles:

    From Wikipedia's Airy disk:

    $$\theta_{Airy} \approx 1.22 \ \text{wavelength} \ / \ \text{aperture}$$

    From Wikipedia's Small-angle approximation:

    $$\theta_{Sat} \approx \text{size} \ / \ \text{distance}$$

    Space telescopes (and probably ground-based observatories and fixed-lens cameras) choose their focal lengths and sensor designs so that the pixel sizes (or four-pixel Bayer arrangements) to be about the same size (or a bit smaller) as the Airy disk.

    Bigger and you are loosing information, smaller and while you slowly gain a bit of information, you much-more-rapidly add noise, complexity and cost.

    So let's see how Russell's camera equipment-based answer compares to Airy's prediction.

    Assuming a 3U cubesat with a folded reflective optics telescope, e.g. some kind of catadioptric system like a Cassegrain or Maksutov arrangement, we'll have a ~100 mm aperture (and a long-enough focal length, in the neighborhood of a 1000 to 1500 mm).

    Assume a nominal wavelength of 500 nm.

    Let's choose 10 km as not-infrequent distance of closest approach that if it just-so-happened wouldn't be provocative, but if you maneuvered your spacecraft to this distance and roughly matched trajectory you would probably raise some eyebrows.

    In this case, let's set $\theta_{Sat} \approx \theta_{Airy}$ and find out how big the satellite would have to be for the image to get possibly detectably larger than that of a point source like a star:

    $$\text{size} \approx 1.22 \ \text{wavelength} \ \times \ \text{distance} \ / \ \text{aperture}$$

    Surprisingly this is only 6 cm!

    So at 10 km, if the target were a cubesat, from an optics point of view only, one would be able to count the U's! A 3U cubesat would usually be differentiable from a 1U cubesat (unless it was pointed right back at you in say a Dove vs. Dove situation soon after deployment)

    *This does nothing to address dynamic pointing accuracy, slew rate, frame rate, exposure time, or signal/noise,not to mention the possibility of folks in dark suits knocking on your door.

    Incidentally the small angle approximation also tells us that our 10 cm aperture f/10 camera (1000 mm focal length) would need ~6 micron pixels, which is right in the ballpark of modern image sensors!


    Catadioptric telescope and an SLR with a "mirror lens" as seen in Wikipedia's Catadioptric system

    Sony_Alpha_55_with_Minolta_500_F8_Reflex.JPGMaksutov_150mm

    click images for full size

    Sources: first: Sony_Alpha_55_with_Minolta_500_F8_Reflex and second: Maksutov_150mm

    borrowed from What's the largest aperture telescope sent beyond the Earth-Moon system?

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      $\begingroup$All useful stuff. My concern was that the distance would need to be "relatively small" - and your 10 km matches that, but as cubesats usually have no propellant (because the launch agency doesn't like carrying 3rd party bombs) unless they have met rigorous acceptance procedures, and even then the amount of propellant carried would make inter-vehicle rendevous unrealistic, unless (as I noted) orbital parameters were such that a small correction would carry your CS across the intervening distance rather slowly. ie not practical with any realistic camera. || I owned the first lens you showed.$\endgroup$CommentedJan 24 at 12:59
    • $\begingroup$@RussellMcMahon Do you mean slew rate? The trick there is to do it electronically - you clock the CCD readout to match the speed of the image motion across the sensor. Of course you have to pre-rotate either the whole cubesat, or at least the sensor or some image-rotating prism ahead of time so that the motion is parallel to the readout direction. This is what made KLA hot decades ago - wafer and mask inspection with continuous stage motion.$\endgroup$
      – uhoh
      CommentedJan 24 at 13:10
    • $\begingroup$@RussellMcMahon For space telescopes, see What was the first use of time-delay integration in Astronomy? Are there instances before GAIA?. || as for the lens, lucky you! Did you stand a kilometer away from a mirror and take a selfie?$\endgroup$
      – uhoh
      CommentedJan 24 at 13:11
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      $\begingroup$It's "only" 500mm but very light and compact. Mirror lenses have "donuts" for out of focus areas that often look poor - with care and luck these can sometimes be minimised. It was a great toy. Sadly it "just vanished' . I know the last photo I took with it and can guess what happened but am not sure.$\endgroup$CommentedJan 24 at 13:26
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      $\begingroup$Less capable NEX5N here at NT3200 here but needs lens. NEX5T is better and often no dearer.$\endgroup$CommentedJan 24 at 19:20

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