1. Assessing and minimizing collisions in satellite mega-constellations
- Author
-
Renu Malhotra, Claudio Bombardelli, Nathan Reiland, and Aaron J. Rosengren
- Subjects
Atmospheric Science ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Computer science ,Generalization ,Satellite conjunction ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Aerospace Engineering ,Dynamical Systems (math.DS) ,01 natural sciences ,Dynamical evolution and stability ,0103 physical sciences ,FOS: Mathematics ,Aerospace & Aeronautics ,Mathematics - Dynamical Systems ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Frozen orbits ,Computer Science::Information Theory ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Constellation ,Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) ,Orbital elements ,Sequence ,Mechanical Engineering ,Probabilistic logic ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Mega-constellations ,Geophysics ,Space and Planetary Science ,General Earth and Planetary Sciences ,Satellite ,Space debris ,Engineering design process ,Algorithm ,Astronomical and Space Sciences ,Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics - Abstract
We aim to provide satellite operators and researchers with an efficient means for evaluating and mitigating collision risk during the design process of mega-constellations. We first establish a baseline for evaluating various techniques for close-encounter prediction and collision-probability calculation (Hoots et al. 1984, Gronchi 2005, JeongAhn and Malhotra 2015) by carrying out brute-force numerical simulations and using a sequence of filters to greatly reduce the computational expense of the algorithm. Next, we estimate conjunction events in the orbital environment following the anticipated deployments of the OneWeb LEO and SpaceX Starlink mega-constellations. As a final step, we investigate Minimum Space Occupancy (MiSO) orbits (Bombardelli et al. 2018), a generalization of the well-known frozen orbits that account for the perturbed-Keplerian dynamics of the Earth-Moon-Sun-satellite system. We evaluate the ability of MiSO configurations of the proposed mega-constellations, as suggested by Bombardelli et al. 2018, to reduce the risk of endogenous (intra-constellation) collisions. The results indicate that the adoption of the MiSO orbital configuration can significantly reduce risk with nearly indistinguishable adjustments to the nominal orbital elements of the constellation satellites., Comment: 32 pages, 19 figures; submitted for publication in Adv. Space Res.; comments welcome more...
- Published
- 2021
- Full Text
- View/download PDF