Magellan  Aerospace
Resident  Space Object Detection using Commercial-off-the-Shelf Star Trackers — There  are around 20,000 human-made Resident Space Objects (RSOs) in orbit around  Earth. This includes functioning satellites, as well as non-functional pieces  of debris, and these numbers are continuing to rise. It is important to track  the location of RSOs in order to prevent potential collisions and damage to  functioning satellites. Currently, only small portions of the sky can be  monitored by space-based RSO detectors, and Earth-based detectors are limited  by cloud cover and daylight cycles. Magellan Aerospace proposes to adapt commercial  star trackers, a type of sensor used for high-accuracy pointing in satellites,  to detect and track RSOs . Using star trackers is an attractive solution, since  almost every satellite in orbit could contribute to the RSO database using  existing onboard hardware with no interruption to the satellite's main mission.  This technology would greatly enrich the RSO monitoring database and can lead  to reduced incidence of RSO collisions through 