Japanese 0.5 m and 1.0 m telescopes to detect space debris and near-earth asteroids

After our experimental activities of several years, our telescope project to build telescopes for the detection and observation of space debris and near-earth asteroids has been approved by the Science and Technology Agency and the project was started from the fiscal year 1998. Two telescopes will be built: a 1.0 m telescope with a 3 degree field of view and position resolution of 0.2 are second to observe geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) space debris larger than 20 – 30 cm and near-earth objects (NEO) larger than 1.0 km, and a 0.5 m telescope will be used for follow-up observations of GEO and NEO and for testing observations of low earth orbit (LEO) space debris. The telescopes will be in full operation around 2001.