Fragmentation characterization in the circular restricted three body problem for cislunar space domain awareness

Abstract

With heightened international interest in spacecraft activities in the vicinity of the Moon, cislunar space debris is likely to follow. Even one fragmentation event can have catastrophic and far-reaching consequences, which drives the need for appropriate debris characterization tools. How a single fragmentation plays out is highly dependent on any given initial condition in the near-chaotic cislunar region. This paper offers a means of structuring the cislunar region in terms of dynamical flow, which enables global characterization of fragmentation events without propagation of every possible case. This work investigates patterns in fragment behaviour as a function of energy, , and orbit location, and explores emergent dynamic structures in the vicinity of the Earth-Moon Lagrange point. Subsequent findings are applied to analysis of a realistic breakup event for a 500 kg satellite on an Lyapunov orbit with a Jacobi constant of 3.0165, modeled using an in–house modified version of the NASA Standard Breakup Model.