High Resolution Imaging of Satellites with Ground-Based 10-m Astronomical Telescopes

High resolution imaging of artificial satellites can play an important role in current and future space endeavors. One such use is acquiring detailed images that can be used to identify or confirm damage and aid repair plans. It is shown that a 10-m astronomical telescope equipped with an adaptive optics system (AO) to correct for atmospheric turbulence using a natural guide star can acquire high resolution images of satellites in low-orbits using a fast shutter and a near-infrared camera even if the telescope is not capable of tracking satellites. With the telescope pointing towards the satellite projected orbit and less than 30 arcsec away from a guide star, multiple images of the satellite are acquired on the detector using the fast shutter. Images can then be shifted and coadded by post processing to increase the satellite signal to noise ratio. Using the Keck telescope typical Strehl ratio and anisoplanatism angle as well as a simple diffusion/reflection model for a satellite 400 km away observed near Zenith at sunset or sunrise, it is expected that such system will produced > 10{sigma} K-band images at a resolution of 10 cm inside a 60 arcsec diameter field of view. If implemented, such camera could deliver the highest resolution satellite images ever acquired from the ground.