Vithurshan Suthakar

Abstract Space situational awareness increasingly relies on optical observations to detect and track resident space objects and to estimate spacecraft attitude. Many existing resources are synthetic or restricted, and few provide on orbit, wide field of view imagery with joint labels for space objects and stars. We present a dataset of near-infrared images acquired by the Fast Auroral Imager on the CASSIOPE spacecraft between January and August 2023.

1. Introduction Space Situational Awareness (SSA) has been identified in the Canadian research community as a top priority for space activity, as it serves to detect, track, identify, and characterize resident space objects (RSOs). The convention on the registration of objects launched into outer space obligates launching nations to supply the United Nations with information regarding the orbit of each space object [1]. However, there are objects in space that have not been identified yet.

1. Introduction Space situational awareness (SSA) has been a growing concern around the world, as space is being reevaluated as a domain that needs protection to sustain a nation’s sovereignty and monitor its assets in space. The number of resident space objects (RSOs) has remarkably increased in recent years. This occurrence is related to the Kessler Syndrome, which describes the probability of a collision between RSOs cascading into further collisions.