Evaluation of Event-Based Sensors for Satellite Material Characterization
- 1 March 2022
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets
- Vol. 59 (2), 627-636
- https://doi.org/10.2514/1.a35015
Abstract
Broadband photometry has been used for many years to infer basic information about satellites; however, there has been limited success at remotely determining satellite surface materials, and the variability of brightness and spectral energy distribution of satellite reflections complicates satellite identification. This paper demonstrates the potential utility of event-based sensors for remotely characterizing satellites based on the reflectance properties of their surface materials. Event-based sensors offer three important advantages over traditional frame-based sensors, such as charge-coupled devices (CCDs) for characterizing satellite materials on orbit: very high temporal resolution, high dynamic range, and low data rates. This allows rapid, fine-resolution measurements over a broad range of intensities. An event-based camera was used to characterize the broadband reflectance properties of five common satellite materials over a range of illumination and observation angles in the laboratory. Some of the results are very distinctive, and have not previously been reported, demonstrating that event-based sensors might perform better than CCDs at satellite identification and material characterization. The results also show that different materials can exhibit quite different, and sometimes very distinctive, illumination/observation geometry-dependent reflectance characteristics. Using high angular resolution event-based data to assess broadband reflectance changes with changing geometry could be an effective means of unambiguously identifying satellites or determining the presence of specific satellite surface materials.Keywords
This publication has 15 references indexed in Scilit:
- A Low Power, Fully Event-Based Gesture Recognition SystemPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2017
- Temperature and Parasitic Photocurrent Effects in Dynamic Vision SensorsIEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, 2017
- Space Solar Cells – 3G30 and Next Generation Radiation Hard ProductsE3S Web of Conferences, 2017
- Multicolor photometry of geosynchronous satellites and application on feature recognitionAdvances in Space Research, 2016
- Laboratory Characterization of Homogeneous Spacecraft MaterialsJournal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 2015
- Incident-angle-dependent reflectance in distributed Bragg reflectors fabricated from ZnO/MgO multilayer filmsOptical Review, 2014
- Analysis of the CanX-1 Engineering Model Spectral Reflectance MeasurementsJournal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 2014
- Space Object Shape Characterization and Tracking Using Light Curve and Angles DataJournal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 2014
- Deriving the spin rate/orientation from the quiescent spacecraft ABRIXAS using optical observationsActa Astronautica, 2001
- Theory for Off-Specular Reflection From Roughened Surfaces*Journal of the Optical Society of America, 1967