Orbital debris–debris collision avoidance

Abstract

We focus on preventing collisions between debris and debris, for which there is no current, effective mitigation strategy. We investigate the feasibility of using a medium-powered (5 kW) ground-based laser combined with a ground-based telescope to prevent collisions between debris objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO). The scheme utilizes photon pressure alone as a means to perturb the orbit of a debris object. Applied over multiple engagements, this alters the debris orbit sufficiently to reduce the risk of an upcoming conjunction. We employ standard assumptions for atmospheric conditions and the resulting beam propagation. Using case studies designed to represent the properties (e.g. area and mass) of the current debris population, we show that one could significantly reduce the risk of nearly half of all catastrophic collisions involving debris using only one such laser/telescope facility. We speculate on whether this could mitigate the debris fragmentation rate such that it falls below the natural debris re-entry rate due to atmospheric drag, and thus whether continuous long-term operation could entirely mitigate the Kessler syndrome in LEO, without need for relatively expensive active debris removal.

Impact of high-risk conjunctions on Active Debris Removal target selection

“…Perhaps even a ground-based laser (Mason et al, 2011) or an air-launched "nudger" (McKnight et al, 2012) system would suffice to prevent the most-dangerous conjunctions. This can be achieved by exerting a force on the involved objects and increasing their miss distance, and thus reducing the collision probability.…”

Experimental results of debris orbit predictions using sparse tracking data from Mt. Stromlo

“…The power is still much less than that required to manoeuvre the object; however, producing a high quality laser beam with high repetition rate is still a difficult task. (2) The poor accuracy of OPs. A real-time orbit update system is needed to provide sufficiently accurate OPs for the laser tracking system.…”

“…In this case one of the objects has to be orbit-manoeuvred externally. There are proposals to externally manoeuvre debris objects, including using groundbased lasers [2,3].…”

Potential of laser-induced ablation for future space applications

“…For small fragmented structures, 1e10 cm in diameter, a groundbased laser, equipped with an integrated acquisition and tracking system from an astronomical class telescope could be used [13,14]. The integration of adaptive optics would be needed to overcome the attenuation of the laser beam caused by atmospheric scattering.…”