With the rapid increase of space debris in the last decades, the risk for collisions of objects in orbit grows significantly. To avoid collisions, it is important to catalog the objects and determine their orbits. In order to propagate accurate orbits, it is necessary to know the orientation of the object, so that the perturbation forces acting on it can be taken into account in the orbit determination. Due to the changing observation geometry during a pass, an observed object reflects sunlight with different intensities. This change in brightness over time can provide information about rotation parameters such as rotation speed and axis.

As part of a student project, all steps were carried out—from data acquisition and processing to the analysis of rotation parameters and orbit estimation. Additionally, an automation component for the various observatory processes was developed and integrated.