Reconstruction of in-orbit breakup events over the long term

Abstract

The number of uncontrollable objects orbiting around the Earth is constantly growing because of the increased number of new missions and launches and the increased frequency of breakup events. Even with debris mitigation guidelines, some breakup events are difficult to predict or avoid. Consequently, it is extremely important to monitor the appearance of new fragments and study them to have a better knowledge of the events and reduce the risk they pose to other active objects.

The goals of this work are the detection, in space and time, of breakup events that occurred in the past and the identification of the parent object(s) involved. The analyses are carried out considering a time span for the event detection of the order of months up to years and considering mean Keplerian orbital elements to retrieve the evolution of the objects in space and time. Furthermore, the work focuses the analyses in a single orbit region, i.e. the Low Earth Orbit region.