A New Approach to Estimating Micro-Debris’ Size Distribution from Solar Array Images

Abstract

This study proposes a new approach to estimating micro-debris distribution from solar array images. In Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), enough debris measurement has not been done because of long distance from the Earth to the orbit. On the other hand, most of the satellites have solar panels as an indispensable power source, and they become the reasonable target of micro-debris and cosmic dust. From diameters of impact craters on the surfaces of the solar arrays the debris’ size distribution can be estimated with Bayesian approach, whereas the real shapes of the impact craters from the camera images arbitrarily taken from slant views should be obtained. We apply projective invariant properties to the original images to recover the images taken from front views which similarly express the real shapes of the craters. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by a series of the numerical simulations using artificial camera images.