Speaker
Description
DRAMA (Debris Risk Assessment and Mitigation Analysis) is a comprehensive tool for the compliance analysis of a space mission with space debris mitigation standards. As part of the suite DRAMA allows modelling of the re-entry of a spacecraft into the Earth’s atmosphere along with an assessment of ground casualty risk.
Presented herein is an overview of two tools, Event Simulator and PRODUCERS which take DRAMA output in order to perform additional analysis via post-processing. Both tools are Python toolsets which break down the analysis into a series of tasks.
The Event Simulator models an “Instrument” embedded on the re-entering vehicle. The instrument aims to collect data on the demise of the spacecraft and is developed within the context of the ESA DRACO program. The Event Simulator aims to provide a digital model of the flight model to aid the setup of the flight instrument prior to flight. Shown is how additional contextual data, such as connectivity, in-depth temperature, pressure and strain measurements can be extracted via post-processing. Such data is useful when mapping across to ground tests. Also shown is how contextual image data is rendered in order to replicate the response of what embedded cameras on the re-entry vehicle will see during re-entry. This includes effects due to temperature and fragmentation.
PRODUCERS, a tool for Predicting the Spectrographic Response of Break-Up Fragments to the Re-Entry Environment. PRODUCERS aims to take the first steps towards providing a capability to compare destructive entry tool predictions with spectroscopic measurements obtained in remote observation campaigns. The intent is to provide evidence to instrument designers and observation campaign planners regarding the spectral content and intensity of spectroscopic signals from destructive entry. The radiation sources PRODUCERS considers are: grey body radiation from fragments, shock layer radiation around fragments, gas phase ablation products from fragments, grey body radiation from hot particles produced by mechanical ablation of fragments, and gas phase ablation products from stripped particles. The long-term aim of PRODUCERS is to improve the ability to correlate modelled fragmentation events to observed flight spectra thus providing indirect evidence to validate these models.
Both the Event Simulator, DRACO as a whole and PRODUCERS have a main goal of providing evidence to improve the understanding of destructive entry fragmentation events. The methodology used in simulating fragmentation is a significant, if not the main, driver in assessing the ground casualty risk of a destructive entry, which strongly motivates the pursuit of these endeavours.
