Effect of small satellites' post-mission disposal on sustainable space utilization

The number of small satellites as those that do not exceed 50kg is rapidly increasing in the low-Earth orbit region. Since the orbital debris mitigation guidelines released by United Nations, Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee and national space agency does not consider small satellites and typical large satellites separately, small satellites also should conduct post-mission disposal. However most small satellites are launched as piggyback satellites, affordable post-mission disposal of small satellites is different from that of typical large satellites, and this post-mission disposal of small satellites may cause the collisions to other satellites. For developers of small satellites, this paper reviews the effect of small satellites post-mission disposal on sustainable space utilization, which was presented by the authors in previous.