Impact of high-risk conjunctions on Active Debris Removal target selection

Resum

Space debris simulations show that if current space launches continue unchanged, spacecraft operations might become difficult in the congested space environment. It has been suggested that Active Debris Removal (ADR) might be necessary in order to prevent such a situation. Selection of objects to be targeted by ADR is considered important because removal of non-relevant objects will unnecessarily increase the cost of ADR. One of the factors to be used in this ADR target selection is the collision probability accumulated by every object. This paper shows the impact of high-probability conjunctions on the collision probability accumulated by individual objects as well as the probability of any collision occurring in orbit. Such conjunctions cannot be predicted far in advance and, consequently, not all the objects that will be involved in such dangerous conjunctions can be removed through ADR. Therefore, a debris remediation method that would address such events at short notice, and thus help prevent likely collisions, is suggested. © 2015 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.