Beam-Park-Experiment-1/2000 with TIRA

A monostatic 24-h debris observation campaign (BPE-1/2000) has been prepared and conducted using FGAN's TIRA L-Band system. Based on experiences from previous Beam-park experiments a similar largely automated data processing is applied on an extended range window of 300–2000km. More than 1500 detections are encountered, 471 of them are verified as being real objects in Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO). PROOF's observation forecasting of catalogued objects is evaluated against the observed objects, and the difficulties obtaining radar cross-sections (RCSs) and object sizes from Beam-park experiments are discussed. Sidelobe detections are identified by using background information like two-line element (TLE) sets and/or catalogued RCSs.In comparison with previous experiments, the statistics show similarities confirming the concept of Beam-park experiments for space debris observations, despite the snapshot character of 24-h experiments. The comparison with MASTER/PROOF'99 and ORDEM2000 leads to a reasonable agreement between models and observations.