Collision Probability of a Target Body Close to a Breakup during the Short Term Evolution of the Debris Cloud
- Paper number
IAC-05-B6.2.06
- Author
Prof. M.R. Ananthasayanam, Indian Institute of Science, India
- Year
2005
- Abstract
This paper deals with the assessment for the collision probability of a target body close to a breakup during the short term evolution of the debris cloud fragments. The well known procedure in Vedder and Tabor [1] considers a target object and the orbiting debris and derives based on a Monte Carlo simulation the distribution of the closet distance that is known to fit a Weibull distribution and subsequently the collision probability is estimated. As mentioned in [1] the evolution of the orbital debris characteristics is not considered. In the present work their procedure is modified to account for only such of those debris, which can reach the target body after propagation with time. Hence a ballistic coefficient filter is introduced for selecting the fragments from the cloud for propagation with time. This filter utilizes the Weisels approach [2] and generates a suitable lookup table of Anil Kumar et al [3] from which only those fragments with the appropriate ballistic coefficients are chosen for further propagation. Further the apogee-perigee filter is also utilised to speed up computation for obtaining the distribution of the distance of closest approach. The simulated debris clouds are generated by using the ASSEMBLE model [4] and these are propagated for nearly 30 days considering the drag alone effect and the behaviour of the clouds are studied for closest approach at the end of each day with respect to a target object. It is observed that the model parameters settle to some values after some time indicating the merger of the debris clouds with the background debris population. Based on the above analysis the quantitative short term collision risk for target objects close to the breakup is obtained. The above study is based on a project funded through a RESPOND program of the Indian Space Research Organization. REFERENCES 1. Vedder, J. D., and Tabor, J. L., New Method for Estimating Low Orbit Collision Probability, Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Volume 22, 1991. 2. Wiesel, W. E., Space Flight Dynamics, McGraw-Hill Book, New York, 1989. 3. Anilkumar, A. K., Ananthasayanam, M. R., and Subba Rao, P. V., A Proposed Reference Collision Probability Estimation Model of the Space Debris Scenario, IAC-04-IAA5.12.5.05, 55th IAC 2004, Vancouver, October 2004. 4. Anilkumar, A. K., Ananthasayanam, M. R., and Subba Rao, P. V., Simulation of Some Historical On-Orbit Breakups Using ASSEMBLE Model, AIAA-2003-5760, Proceedings of 41st Aerospace Science Meeting and Exhibit (Atmospheric Environment), Reno, January 2003.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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