International Space Debris Re-Entry workshop

We are pleased to announce the 6^th International Space-Debris Re-Entry Workshop, which will take place on January 15, 2025 at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) Press Centre. This workshop continues the tradition of fostering collaboration and data exchange within the space debris and re-entry community.

This year’s event is designed to provide hands-on, workshop-style environment with a focus on collaboration rather than a formal symposium. During the workshop, ESA will release and make available new data from the re-entry events of the last two years:

• the assisted re-entry of Aeolus (July 2023),
• the natural re-entry of ERS-2 after manoeuvres to lower its orbit (February 2024),
• the uncontrolled re-entry of OPS-SAT, which kept running experiments to the end (May 2024),
• the targeted re-entry of Cluster-2, where orbital changes were made to change the target region of its uncontrolled re-entry, observed from an airplane (September 2024).

These recent-re-entries have provided a lot of data, and the workshop will explore how this information can be used to improve re-entry modelling and predictability, drawing lessons from these cases to refine future approaches. There will be three working sessions:

1. Science of re-entry: focusing on re-entry physics, material demisability and atmospheric interaction, with specific data-driven insights from the above missions,
2. Modelling challenges: addressing the challenges in re-entry break-up modelling tools to accurately predict re-entry trajectories and outcomes, and how the latest data can help resolve them,
3. Observation campaigns: discussing coordinated observation efforts to further improve data collection from both ground- and space-based sensors, and even air-based sensors.

While this is not a symposium and abstracts are not required, feel free to contact us if you’re interested in presenting any of these topics.

Please notice that attendance on-site is subject to capacity limits. Registered participants will be informed if such measures apply. Participation in the workshop is free of charge.

We look forward to welcoming you to this workshop!

Context

The atmospheric re-entry of return capsules and manned space objects has been under continuous study since the beginning of the space age. Nowadays also the monitoring of the re-entry of space debris objects and the prediction of re-entry break-up processes has become part of nominal operations and mission design.

The first international workshop on re-entry of space debris was organised by ESA in 1983 in response to the re-entries of Skylab and Cosmos-1402, and has been repeated over the past decades in response to other significant re-entry events. Since then, the topic has broadened from individual re-entries to include, among other, full object catalogue predictions, orbital lifetime assessment, and thermo-mechanical fragmentation in the lower atmosphere. From the point of view of space debris, the entire orbital lifetime after the end of mission down to potential impact on ground needs to be addressed.