Flamingo

The Flamingo satellites, owned and operated by Vyoma, form the backbone of Vyoma’s Space Safety and Space Intelligence services. They perform Space Surveillance & Tracking (SST): surveillance enables cataloguing of space objects and event detection, while tracking allows rapid follow-up on objects of interest. The first satellite, Flamingo-1, already provides critical follow-up capabilities and observations of orbital regions otherwise impossible to attain. Once the full constellation of 12 satellites is online, revisit time for observations reduces to below 1 hour for all LEO targets, positioning the constellation to keep custody of prime targets in LEO. The Flamingo satellites produce images of the star background and space objects of interest, both recorded as streaks in each frame. The associated Vyoma Data Processing system recognizes both stars and objects, associates targets across images, performs astrometric reduction, and produces unassociated Tracking Data Messages (TDMs). A time-series approach enables data points with subpixel accuracy, and parallel implementations of classical and machine-learning based methods increase sensitivity and enable on-the-edge (onboard satellite) image processing. Vyoma’s ambition is to build and maintain a fully independent catalogue of space objects, the Vyoma Catalogue, based on services including time-bias estimation, initial orbit determination, track-to-track, track-to-orbit, and orbit-to-orbit association, aiming to provide the most accurate orbital information on catalogued and currently uncatalogued objects.