SPACE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT AND
THE RESILIENT SPACE ENVIRONMENT

State of the Art

The publication of the IAA Cosmic Study on STM 2006 defined Space traffic management (STM) as: “the set of technical and regulatory provisions for promoting safe access into outer space, operations in outer space and return from outer space to Earth free from physical or radio-frequency interference.” This lead to the subsequent creation of the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines of UNCOPUOS of 2008 and the ISO 24113:2011 Space Systems – Space Debris Mitigation standards. These standards are necessary but not sufficient to reduce the risk of collisions. A viable STM program faces a great barrier caused by the ever-increasing number and variety of orbiting objects ranging in size from a few microns to several meters and the planned future large constellations. In addition, most debris objects cannot be tracked and motion cannot be accurately measured or simulated. The current two line element (TLE) sets and associated processes used for disseminating data about space debris are not adequate for precision conjunction analysis or accurate long term prediction.  In order to ensure that the space environment is resilient to anomalies and catastrophic events and its exploitation is sustainable  a comprehensive STM system must be implemented, integrating improved space situational awareness (SSA), long term orbit prediction, debris removal, re-entry risk assessment and new tools to support space operators.

Objectives

WP8 covers all activities related to the future evolution of the space environment, the required change in operations, the problem of planning and executing collision avoidance manoeuvres and the deployment and dispose of future constellations.

Research Output

Margheri, A. and Misquero, M. (2020), A dissipative Kepler problem with a family of singular drags. Mech. Dyn. Astr. 132, 17, 29 March 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10569-020-9956-7

Ortega, R. and Misquero, M. (2020), Some Rigorous Results on the 1:1 resonance of the spin-orbit Problem, SIAM J. Appl. Dyn. Syst., In press, Accepted on 2 July 2020, Preprint available at https://www.ugr.es/~ecuadif/files/MisqueroOrtega.pdf

Misquero, M. (2020), The spin-spin model and the capture into the double synchronous resonance, Nonlinearity, In press, Accepted on 26 October 2020, Preprint available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.09354

Celletti, A., Pucacco, G., & Vartolomei, T. (2020). Proper elements for space debris,Submitted at Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.

Efthymiopoulos, C., Legnaro E., Daquin, J., and Gkolias, I.: A deep-dive into the 2g+h resonance (preprint).

Legnaro, E., and Efthymiopoulos, C.: Analytical theory for Inclination dependent Lunisolar Resonances (preprint).

Paoli, R. (2020) The dynamics around extended bodies: tools and techniques. Presented at the Stardust-R Global Virtual Workshop I (GVW-I), Online. 7-10 Sep. 2020, https://arnold.dm.unipi.it/wordpress/index.php/timetable/event/roberto-paoli/.

Peñarroya, P., Vyas, S., Paoli, R., & Kajak, K. M. (2020) Survey of Landing Methods on Small Bodies : Benefits of Robotics Manipulators to the Field.Poster presented at the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS), Online. 19-23 Oct. 2020, DOI: 5281/zenodo.4275978.

Paoli, R. (2020) The dynamics around the Earth and other extended bodies. Presented at The Conferences of the Doctoral Schools of the Romanian University Consortium, Online. 22-23 Oct. 2020, https://profs.info.uaic.ro/~CSDCU_MIF2020/index.php/matematica/.

Paoli, R. & Gales, C. (2021) Semi-analytic theory for Solar Radiation Pressure semi-secular resonances. (In preparation).

Paoli, R. & Gales, C. (2021) Spherical Harmonic coefficients for some constant density polyhedra and their gravitational influence. (In preparation).