Orbit determination through optical measurements from the Loiano observatory

The topic of near-Earth space overcrowding is getting increasingly concerning throughout the years. The more and more probable collisions between objects in orbit may compromise the success of operative missions, restrict the access to fundamental orbital slots and trigger a vicious cycle of further collisions. Tracking spacecraft to improve the prediction about their trajectories and associated uncertainty is among the activities recommended to face this challenging issue. The work presented in this thesis reports on the outcome of the tracking activity held in the INAF-OAS observatory in Loiano (BO), Italy, using an experimental telescope system, TANDEM, designed for the observation of the extremely fast objects populating the low Earth orbit, and on the data processing pipeline developed to produce orbit determination solutions for the tracked objects. In particular, an estimation filter has been set up by means of the NASA's JPL Python astrodynamic library MONTE to improve the a priori uncertainty affecting the TLE set of the spacecraft's orbital parameters, exploiting the information carried by the measurements coming from TANDEM. Tracked objects include spacecraft and debris in two different orbital regimes, namely MEO and LEO. Results show that TANDEM telescope together with JPL's MONTE software, can provide Orbit Determination solutions with rms residuals of less than 1 and 30 arsec in MEO and LEO, respectively. These numbers are in line with the requirements set by the EUSST Consortium, thereby confirming that TANDEM represents a useful asset for the European Space Surveillance and Tracking system.