Space debris laser ranging with a 60  W single-frequency slab nanosecond green laser at 200  Hz

Abstract

Space debris laser ranging was achieved with a 60 W, 200 Hz, 532 nm nanosecond slab, single-frequency green laser at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory's 60 cm satellite laser ranging system. There were 174 passes of space debris measured in 2017, with the minimum radar cross section (RCS) being 0.25 m2 and the highest ranging precision up to 13.6 cm. The RCS of space debris measured with the farthest distances in 174 passes was analyzed. The results show that the farthest measurement distance (R) and RCS (S) were fitted to R = 1388.159S0.24312, indicating that this laser can measure the distance of 1388.159 km at an RCS of 1 m2, which is very helpful to surveillance and research on low-Earth-orbit space debris.