Prediction and Image Formation for Serendipitous Resident Space Object Underflights of Landsat 8

Non-Earth imaging (NEI) of resident space objects (RSO) has become more readily available recently due to an expanding commercial sector focusing specifically on the the NEI task, as well as high spatial resolution Earth imaging systems being agile enough to collect NEI targets. Imaging of RSOs is an important capability aiding those in the Space Domain Awareness (SDA) community in assessing satellite health, classification and understanding of debris objects, as well as determination of RSO capability beyond what might be available in the public domain. In addition to deliberate tasking and pointing of NEI and Earth imaging satellites to image other RSOs, it is common for RSOs to serendipitously traverse through the field of view of Earth satellites such as NASA’s Landsat 8 and 9. The exponential growth of objects in low Earth orbit presents a unique opportunity to advance the field of Space Domain Awareness by harnessing this serendipitous collection of spectral RSO signatures embedded in existing image data. Since the relative motion of the RSO is drastically different from the motion of the Earth, the RSO’s appearance in the traditionally formed image product is almost always indecipherable. We present a simple geometric approach to determining when RSO underflights occur for nadir viewing platforms such as Landsat 8 and 9, calculation of the RSO’s apparent velocity in the observer’s object space, as well as a simple approach to resample the uncorrected sensor image data specifically for a particular underflight scenario.