Optical tracking of near-geosynchronous debris

For all you space-debris aficionados - a note in the latest newsletter
of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (see
http://www.noao.edu/noao/noaonews/dec05/pdf/
where it's on pages 27/8, at the start of the Cerro Tololo section)
reports results from a program using
the 0.9m Curtis Schmidt telescope at Cerro Tololo, Chile, to
track live and dead objects near geosynchronous orbit. They
find lots of small objects as well as big satellites. For bright and thus
generally large targets, they see the expected effects
of perturbations on passive objects, keeping the orbits close
to circular but pumping the inclinations as high as 16 degrees.
Fainter (smaller) things show a wider range of eccentricity,
suggesting that they are being pushed around by such nongravitational
effects as radiation pressure (which becomes more important for
greater area/mass ratios, like bits of insulating foil).

Bill Keel

Thanks, Bill!

/dps