Supervisor: Dr Mark Norris
Low Earth Orbit is becoming increasingly crowded, with the number of active satellites projected to increase from less than 1000 in 2006 to perhaps as many as 100,000 a decade from now. With increasing numbers comes an increased risk of collisions, and increasingly detrimental effects on ground based astronomy. This masters by research project will focus on either examining and mitigating the effect of increasing satellite numbers on ground based observatories such as UCLan’s Alston Observatory, or on how observations of satellites using UCLan’s powerful modern telescopes can help to characterise the properties and orbits and hence reduce the risk of catastrophic on orbit collision.