Speaker
Description
Space debris represents a growing threat to operational satellites in LEO. Beyond a critical object density, collisions can trigger a self-sustaining fragmentation cascade. The primary contributors to this debris population are satellite breakup events caused by hypervelocity impacts. Owing to the irreversible consequences of orbital debris, significant effort has been devoted to developing breakup models. The NASA Standard Breakup Model relies on simplified scaling laws calibrated using impact experiments and historical observations. This study evaluates their validity through comparison with high-fidelity FEM simulations and identifies discrepancies in fragment statistics, highlighting conditions where physics-based simulations provide reliable predictions than empirical models.
| Technical Domain | 6: UNDERSTAND AND MITIGATE ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF SPACE OBJECTS AND DEBRIS |
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