Preliminary debris risk assessment for mega-constellations in low and medium earth orbit due to satellite breakup
| Autor: | Joseph Canoy, Robert Bettinger |
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| Rok vydání: | 2023 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation: Applications, Methodology, Technology. :154851292311638 |
| ISSN: | 1557-380X 1548-5129 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/15485129231163868 |
| Popis: | This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the potential risk posed by artificial debris clouds in low Earth orbit (LEO) from mega-constellations, modeled after current communication constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb with 750 satellites each. The analysis examines three different constellation designs: a low-altitude LEO, a high-altitude LEO, and a medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellation, which will be positioned using the Walker-Delta design. The study is based on physics-based digital mission engineering and a Monte Carlo simulation framework. The simulation involves debris generated from a single breakup of one randomly selected satellite per run, but does not consider cascading debris events. This debris cloud is propagated for 1 week and how it interacts with the mega-constellation is recorded. The results show an average of 705.65 potential conjunctions within the LEO constellation, with 14.40% of those being considered catastrophic, and an average of 165.5 conjunctions in the MEO constellation, with 0.72% considered catastrophic. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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