Design of optical system for space-based space debris detection

Space debris affects the safety of Earth orbit and the detection of space debris is becoming increasingly important. Space-based detection has the advantages of not being affected by weather and being close to each other. A high-sensitivity optical system for space debris detection is designed, which has a field of view of 1° × 1° , a wavelength range of 450nm-900nm, a aperture of 150mm, a signal-to-noise ratio of 5, and can detect 12-magnitude debris, it can also provide early warning for space debris smaller than 1 cm approaching 100km. The results of image quality evaluation, tolerance analysis, temperature adaptability analysis and ghost image analysis show that the system has a speckle diameter of 6.8μm, distortion less than 0.01% and high capability concentration. The results of tolerance analysis show that the lens yield is higher than 90% if the RMS radius of the system is greater than 0.0058 mm. The results of temperature adaptability analysis show that the defocus of the system is 0.004mm from atmospheric pressure to vacuum in the range of -20°C-50°C, and the system has good adaptability to temperature environment. The results of ghost image analysis show that the system ghost illuminance is less than 1E-15w/mm² , and has no effect on imaging. The results show that the designed space debris detection optical system has the characteristics of high sensitivity and large detection range, and meets requirements of space debris detection optical system.