Coarse pointing of optical ground station toward geosynchronous optical communication satellite by use of video tracking sub-scope

In National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, an ultra-high speed optical communication terminal “HICALI,” which will be installed in a next generation engineering test satellite. The satellite is scheduled to be launched and moved to the geosynchronous orbit in 2021. Geosynchronous satellites shine by reflecting sunlight. Due to the resent evolution of the image sensors, it becomes possible to record the image of the satellite as a movie in real time. We are now developing a coarse pointing system for optical ground station using piggy-back telescope and high sensitivity digital single lens camera. In this paper, we will introduce observational technics and image data analysis methods, and also show estimated evaluation of spatial distribution of objects around the target area on the basis of the observational results.