Satellite Fragmentation Modeling with IMPACT

摘要

The software program IMPACT developed by The Aerospace Corporation has been used for more than 20 years to model explosions and hypervelocity collisions at orbital altitudes. IMPACT has been used extensively for intercept test range and orbital safety studies, flight test planning, on-orbit event analyses, debris mitigation and spacecraft design studies, warfare simulations, and space safety and risk analyses. This paper discusses the approach and algorithms used in the development of the IMPACT collision model.