infrastructure
Earth Radar Finds What Is Beside the Satellite
Open Sentinel-1 voltage data revealed 76 nearby objects and recovered two debris transits without orbital predictions.
Summary
Open Sentinel-1 voltage data revealed 76 nearby objects and recovered two debris transits without orbital predictions.
Radar echo power falls with the fourth power of distance, making a nearby object dramatically brighter to a spaceborne sensor than to a distant ground radar. Using Sentinel-1 recordings from six days, catalogue-assisted processing produced a manually checked set of 76 satellites, rocket bodies and debris fragments at ranges from 41.7 to 492.9 kilometers. A blind search recovered two selected debris transits, and one short encounter improved a catalogue orbit using range and Doppler. Ground scatter remains the dominant limit for Earth-looking observations. Idealized calculations suggest millimeter-scale sensitivity at ten kilometers, but those figures assume receiver-noise conditions and coherent integration; the demonstrated sample establishes feasibility, not a complete debris census.
Why it matters
Open Sentinel-1 voltage data revealed 76 nearby objects and recovered two debris transits without orbital predictions.
Limits and context
- Idealized calculations suggest millimeter-scale sensitivity at ten kilometers, but those figures assume receiver-noise conditions and coherent integration; the demonstrated sample establishes feasibility, not a complete debris census.
Key claims
Open Sentinel-1 voltage data revealed 76 nearby objects and recovered two debris transits without orbital predictions.
Qualification: Idealized calculations suggest millimeter-scale sensitivity at ten kilometers, but those figures assume receiver-noise conditions and coherent integration; the demonstrated sample establishes feasibility, not a complete debris census.
Evidence: source-2026-11-10-016
Sources
- arXiv preprint 2611.12158, original v1arXiv · primary research
Corrections
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