Collision avoidance during deorbiting of satellites at end-of-life

摘要

The deorbiting of satellites at end-of-life is the only effective means to keep low-Earth orbit clean. With the success of solar-electric propulsion systems deorbiting now becomes economically feasible also for spacecraft above 1000 km altitude. The deorbiting in this case will take several months. The collision risk with 10-cm objects during this time is only of the order of 10~-6 per square meter, however, it may be used as an argument to reorbit an aging satellite above LEO rather than to deorbit it.