ASI-SDLR: A Space Debris Laser Ranging Station with Advanced Adaptive Optics

The Italian Space Agency (ASI) awarded the design and construction of a complete Space Debris Laser Ranging (SDLR) station with advanced adaptive optics to CASTORE (Consortium for Adaptive Space Tracking of Objects ’Round the Earth). The facility will be located at the ASI Space Geodesy Center (CGS) in Matera and is based on a 1-m telescope, equipped with an adaptive secondary mirror for field stabilization and high order adaptive opticscompensation of both the input beam and the uplink laser ranging beam. The adaptive optics system will also utilizea Laser Guide Star (LGS) generating a reference 589 nm light source in the mesospheric sodium layer, providingeffective compensation during the debris tracking. The telescope's primary instrumentation suite comprises high-precision photometers and polarimeters operating in the visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) spectral ranges,complemented by narrow-field and wide-field CCD cameras for target acquisition and tracking. All instruments arelocated on large, fixed optical benches in the Coudé room, allowing easy integration and further expansion of thesystem. The project is currently in the design phase and will start construction in 2025, to be completed in 2026. Inthe early design phase, we have carried out an extensive site measurement campaign that provides accuratecharacterization of the on-site atmospheric turbulence: this is a key input for the end-to-end simulations of theadaptive optics–assisted ranging system. We will present the ranging station design, the simulation results, and theexpected performance