Improvements to NASA’s Debris Assessment Software

Paper number

IAC-07-A6.3.09

Author

Mr. John Opiela, ESCG/Jacobs Sverdrup, United States

Coauthor

Mr. Nicholas L. Johnson, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States

Year

2007

Abstract

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  The ORDEM96 debris environment model has been replaced by ORDEM2000 in DAS 2.0, which is also designed to accept anticipated revisions to the environment definition.  Numerous upgrades have also been applied to the assessment of human casualty potential due to reentering debris.  Routines derived from the Object Reentry Survival Analysis Tool, Version 6 (ORSAT 6), determine which objects are assessed to survive reentry, and the resulting risk of human casualty is calculated directly based upon the orbital inclination and a future world population database.  When evaluating reentry risks, the user may enter up to 200 unique hardware components for each launched object, in up to four nested levels.  This last feature allows the software to more accurately model components that are exposed below the initial breakup altitude.  

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 new native Microsoft Windows graphical user interface (GUI) is a vast improvement over the previous DOS-based interface.  In the new version, functions are more-clearly laid out, and the GUI includes the standard Windows-style “Help” functions.  The underlying routines within the DAS code are also improved.

Abstract document

IAC-07-A6.3.09.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-07-A6.3.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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