RSO Attitude and Optical Property Estimation from Space-Based Light Curves

With the increase in the number of objects orbiting Earth, Space Situational Awareness (SSA) has becoming an important area of research in the space sector. Star trackers are readily available and used in space for attitude determination, with recent papers demonstrating the benefit of using space-based optical measurements for Resident Space Object (RSO) detection. In this paper, we describe the interpretation of light curves of an RSO's taken from star trackers to estimate an RSO's shape, attitude and optical properties. In this model, two Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BDRF's) are compared, namely a defined facet model and an anisotropic phong model. From the initial results an RSO's shape, attitude, optical properties can be estimated with basic priory information on the shape of the RSO.