Speakers
Description
The scale and cadence of space activities today are expected to have long-lasting impacts on the Low Earth Orbit environment. Debris evolution models exist, but there remains a gap between environmental modelling outputs and how they translate to guiding and informing operational and regulatory decision-making. This work, developed as part of the ERC project GREEN SPECIES in a collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and Secure World foundation, addresses this gap by linking orbital environment evolution to decision-relevant objectives that support evidence-based policymaking and operator decision-making.
We leverage an integrated simulation framework to evaluate mitigation strategies as controllable policy levers. A simplified one-dimensional density-based debris evolution model is used to capture the dynamics of active satellites, inactive objects, and fragments across discretised altitude shells. The debris model is combined with a state-dependent linear feedback controller that dynamically optimises debris mitigation measures to achieve prescribed space sustainability targets.
This paper investigates the calibration of Post-Mission Disposal (PMD) measures under different operating scenarios, which are defined by varying assumptions around launch traffic and PMD requirements. For each scenario, the model is used to identify the combination and level of mitigation actions required to achieve defined targets in terms of the cumulative collision probabilities across satellite mission profiles. The aim is to connect technical modelling outputs with practical policy and operational decision-making contexts, and to integrate stakeholder input into model- and evidence-based decision-making to support space sustainability goals.
| Which section would you like to submit your abstract to? | Session 9: “Space debris mitigation policies” |
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