Canadian surveillance of space concept demonstrator-metric accuracy and limiting magnitude assessment

Defence R&D Canada (DRDC), in partnership with the Canadian Forces' Surveillance of Space Project, is developing an array of three remotely operated, ground-based optical observatories for space surveillance (the Concept Demonstrator, CD). Manual metric accuracy testing of the CD, performed using a single sensor, began in December 2003, and focused on GPS calibration satellites. Results from this study are promising, with angular residual uncertainties less than 3″ with arcsec level biases. This short metric accuracy campaign also permitted a rough sensitivity performance check. This paper summarizes these metric accuracy and sensitivity performance checks of the CD.