Italian bistatic radar system for surveillance of space debris in Low Earth Orbit

Space debris are man made objects distributed at different altitudes around Earth. The space debris environment represents a serious hazard for both past and future space activities and a collision avoidance system is desirable to protect operative spacecraft and human activities. In this paper we investigate on the performance of an Italian bistatic C band radar system configuration for surveillance of space debris at the orbital altitude range of the COSMO-SkyMed radar satellites, approximately 620 km. In the nearly future this system should be realized and constituted by the Medicina (Emilia-Romagna) radiotelescope receiver and a continuous wave (CW) transmitter located in Noto (Sicily). The bistatic radar sensitivity, as a function of object size and altitude, is evaluated for both catalogued and uncatalogued objects near COSMO-SkyMed orbit. Finally some simulation results will be presented to show the expected performances of the system.