長パルス一次レーダーによるUSERS REVカプセルの追跡

概要

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After 8.5 month-experiments in orbit, the recovery vehicle (REV) of the USERS satellite was reentered into the atmosphere and successfully retrieved on the sea in May 30th, 2003. During the atmospheric flight, the trajectory of the vehicle was tracked with the new precision radar system at Kagoshima Space Center, Uchinoura, Kagoshima. Since, the vehicle has no active tracking instrument such as transponder, the primary radar should be utilized so as to detect the object. However, the usual primary radar system is insufficient to track the tiny vehicle. Thus, a high performance long-pulse primary radar, which had capability of recognizing the 1m^2 object at the distant of approximately 2,000 km range, was applied to the tracking operation.Initially, the radar caught the reentry vehicle in the previously predicted direction. However, theradar lost the tracking data, intermediately. In this paper, the operation sequence of the reentry tracking is briefly introduced. Then, the tracking result is summarized with the estimation of the impact point by the off-line computation.
宇宙航空研究開発機構の論文