On the feasibility of the monostatic scheme for constructing the land-based telescope at supervision of space objects

In modern large aperture optical systems for tracking astronomical objects, the technology of bistatic schemes is widely introduced, in which the laser, the main and auxiliary telescopes are spatially separated. This requires additional measures to be taken when aligning the optical axes of telescopes, especially when tracking LEO space objects. The choice of bistatic schemes in astronomical telescopes is due to the problem of “tilt uncertainty” inherent in monostatic schemes for the formation of a laser reference star. This problem is caused by the difficulty or even the impossibility of determining the tilt of the wavefront when the laser guide star jitters in the image plane. The article discusses a monostatic scheme for constructing ground-based adaptive optoelectronic systems. The monostatic scheme combines the optical axis of the laser, which forms the laser guiding star, and the optical axis of the telescope, which serves to obtain images of space objects by eliminating phase disturbances of the atmosphere due to the radiation of the laser guiding star. The proposed method for determining the tilt of the wavefront in a monostatic scheme is based on the analysis of expressions for the dispersion of the tilt jitter of the images of a laser reference star and a space object for the case when the diameter of the receiving aperture of the telescope is much larger than the diameter of the aperture of the laser forming the laser reference star. This approach is based on the long-elicited strong correlation between the instantaneous values of the tilt of the laser beam and the received beam from a natural star, transmitted towards each other. When observing low-orbit small-sized space objects and laser reference stars, it is assumed that they are in the Fresnel zone of the receiving aperture of the optoelectronic system and within the isoplanatism angle of the atmosphere, determined within the framework of an isotropic and locally homogeneous model of atmospheric turbulence. The proposed solution made it possible to determine the value of the instantaneous tilt angle for the image of an inconspicuous space object in the focal plane of the receiving aperture of the telescope on the basis of measuring the instantaneous tilt angle for the actually observed image of the laser reference star. The results can be used in the development of ground-based adaptive optoelectronic tracking systems for low-orbit small-sized space objects.