Areas of activity:

1. Development and improvement of methods for evaluating the surface and dynamic characteristics of artificial Earth satellites in orbit. LSR's own developments in this direction have successfully proven themselves in cases of assessing an emergency situation that occurred with a spacecraft in orbit for one reason or another.  Also, the developed methods in the vast majority of cases allow, based on the results of complex observations (positional and photometric), to distinguish destabilized space objects (space debris) from active objects and, in the latter case, to assess their intended purpose. Thus, these methods can be used to monitor the behavior of space objects in the interests of national security and defense of Ukraine. The Space Research Laboratory cooperates with the National Center for Control and Testing of Space Vehicles and applies these methods to provide operational information.

2. High-precision monitoring of the behavior of geosynchronous satellites in the orbit from the visibility zone from 70° east longitude to 50° west longitude. The hardware complex of LSR currently allows for positional observations of geosynchronous satellites up to magnitude 17-17.5 with an accuracy of 1" of arc.  It is also possible to conduct photometric observations of these objects in individual cases. The monitoring of geosynchronous objects is also very important for the national security of Ukraine, since there are also dual-purpose communication satellites in these orbits, the movements of which must be monitored.

3. Study of the influence of near-Earth physical fields on the movement of artificial space objects. As long-term photometric observations of artificial satellites of the Earth (ASE), including destabilized objects, have shown, they can be qualitative indicators of physical processes at their altitudes. Second changes in their own rotation, which are recorded thanks to photometric observations, make it possible to detect insignificant (10-3 -10-5 N/m) sources of disturbances in near-Earth space and their interaction during impact on the Earth's artificial satellite. This direction of research in LSR was started more than 25 years ago.

4. Study of the physical characteristics of natural space objects (asteroids, variable stars). LSR is a participant in programs for photometric observations of asteroids with the aim of determining their shape and clarifying the meaning of their rotation periods. This program is coordinated by colleagues from Poland (University of Poznań). Also, together with colleagues from Slovakia, we launched a project of photometric studies of eclipsing variable stars in order to determine their physical characteristics (temperature, luminosity, mass, etc.), and, if possible, search for a third body in these binary systems. Such a third can be a dwarf star or an exoplanet.