Speaker
Description
The concept of an orbital carrying capacity was introduced relatively recently. It works under the assumption that, like other ecosystems, space in orbit around Earth is a limited resource. Efforts have been made to evaluate the total available space capacity and the share of capacity consumed both by current missions and for different future scenarios. This way the maximum number of missions that could be supported can be estimated and potentially unsustainable scenarios identified. Currently, there is no clear consensus on how these estimations should be made. Several different approaches have been proposed so far. They can be broadly classified in source-sink models, proxy value-based approaches, and risk-based approaches. Those differ significantly in the way the capacity calculation is performed.
Instead of evaluating these approaches directly, this work evaluates the different input parameters that should go into the estimation of the capacity. Parameters are split into mission based, like satellite properties and orbit, Infrastructure based, like tracking and cataloguing performance, and environment based, like space debris background or atmospheric density. For each parameter, the mechanism through which it influences the capacity is discussed. Interactions between different parameters are also evaluated. The sensitivity of the capacity to these parameters is estimated based on the THEMIS approach. This work could help identify parameters that might lack modelling in certain approaches but also understand if different approaches would be equivalent if they model the same parameters with the same or at least similar sensitivities. This work is performed as part of the ESA Contract No. 4000145375/24/D/BL funded by the ESA safety office.
| Which section would you like to submit your abstract to? | Session 5: “How to assess the impact of space missions onto the space environment?” |
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