A Resident Space Object (RSO) is a natural or artificial object that orbits another body e.g. Sun Orbiting, Earth Orbiting, Mars Orbiting etc. It is most often used to reference objects that are Earth orbiting. In the case of Earth orbiting the possible orbit classifications for an object are:
Low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...
(LEO),
Medium Earth orbit
A medium Earth orbit (MEO) is an geocentric orbit, Earth-centered orbit with an altitude above a low Earth orbit (LEO) and below a high Earth orbit (HEO) – between above sea level. (MEO),
High Earth orbit
A high Earth orbit is a geocentric orbit with an altitude entirely above that of a geosynchronous orbit (). The orbital periods of such orbits are greater than 24 hours, therefore satellites in such orbits have an apparent retrograde motion ...
(HEO) or
Geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO).
Identification of RSOs
RSO acquisition, tracking, and data collection can be extremely challenging. The primary method for gathering this information is to make a direct observation of an RSO via
Space surveillance
Space domain awareness is the study and monitoring of satellites orbiting the earth. It involves the detection, tracking, cataloging and identification of artificial objects, i.e. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or fragmentatio ...
sensors. However the system is not foolproof and RSOs can become lost to the tracking system. Additionally not all new objects are acquired in a timely fashion which means that these new objects, in addition to the lost RSOs, results in uncorrelated detections when they are finally observed. Since space-missions have been increasing over the years the number of uncorrelated targets is at an all-time high.
Cataloging
A number of international agencies endeavor to maintain catalogs of the man-made resident space objects (RSOs) currently orbiting the Earth.
One example would be the
Two-line element set public catalog.
References
{{reflist
External links
Live Satellite Tracking: Operational & Non-Operationalfrom AGI.
Orbits