IMPROVEMENTS TO NASA'S DEBRIS ASSESSMENT SOFTWARE

摘要

NASA's Debris Assessment Software (DAS) has been substantially revised and expanded. DAS is designed to assist NASA programs in performing orbital debris assessments, as described in NASA's "Guidelines and Assessment Procedures for Limiting Orbital Debris." The extensive upgrade of DAS was undertaken to reflect changes in the debris mitigation guidelines, to incorporate recommendations from DAS users, and to take advantage of recent software capabilities for greater user utility. DAS 2.0 includes an updated environment model and enhanced orbital propagators and reentry-survivability models. The new DAS is also designed to accept anticipated revisions to the debris environment definition. Numerous upgrades have also been applied to the assessment of human casualty potential due to reentering debris. Reentry survivability routines determine which objects are assessed to survive reentry, and the resulting risk of human casualty is calculated directly based upon the orbit and a future world population database. The new DAS 2.0 provides an updated set of tools for users to assess their mission's compliance with the NASA Safety Standard and does so with a clear and easy-to-understand interface. The layout of functions is clear, and the native Microsoft Windows graphical user interface includes the standard "Help" functions.