Presentation #313.02 in the session Asteroids Observational Surveys (iPosters).
TransAstra Corporation’s ground-based Sutter Survey system began operations in mid-spring 2022 from Winer Observatory (648) in southern Arizona and has been operating since mid-July 2022 from Sierra Remote Observatory (G80) in central California. The survey is focussed on high angular rate of motion near Earth objects, space situational awareness monitoring of spacecraft and orbital debris, and discovering asteroids for commercially viable mining opportunities. The current system at G80 employs four 28cm RASA telescopes, each equipped with a 61 Megapixel ZWO ASI 6200 camera, on a common equatorial mount. A series of 125 five-second exposures are acquired and processed using optimized matched filter tracking (OMFT), an extension of techniques known as ‘synthetic tracking’ and ‘stack-and-shift processing’, designed to efficiently detect the fast-moving targets of interest even when their per pixel signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) is less than one. We will report on the current status of operations, detection and discovery statistics, and future plans.