General Perturbations Methods for Orbit Propagation with Particular Application to Space Debris Mitigation Compliance

摘要

The average number of spacecraft launched per year has recently and rapidly increased, a trend largely the result of the increased use of small and micro-satellites, platforms such as the CubeSat. This growth trend is unlikely to reverse in the near-term. To mitigate the risk that spacecraft pose to the availability and accessibility of the space environment, debris mitigation standards currently recommend that spacecraft be removed from low-Earth orbit within 25 years of end-of-mission. In order to prove compliance with these standards, spacecraft operators must demonstrate the evolution of their spacecraft's orbit through the use of orbit propagation software. A new general perturbation method for orbit lifetime analysis has been developed by the authors. There are many applications for such a method, however herein its use in space debris mitigation compliance is demonstrated. The most notable result presented herein is in collision risk analysis; using the volume swept (equivalent to area-time product) during de-orbit as a metric for collision risk it is shown that, contrary to the widely held belief, drag augmentation typically increases collision risk. It is shown that if applied in the worst-case scenario, specifically at the wrong time during the solar activity cycle, drag augmentation can increase the collision risk by an order of magnitude. Furthermore, a weighted volume swept integrating the risk posed by the current catalogue of space objects is also presented.