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Analysis of Breakup Events ANALYSIS OF BREAKUP EVENTS V. Braun(1), S. Lemmens(2), B. Reihs(2), H. Krag(2), and A. Horstmann(3) (1)IMS Space Consultancy at Space Debris Office, ESA/ESOC, Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany, Email: [email protected] (2)Space Debris Office, ESA/ESOC, Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany (3)Institute of Space Systems, TU Braunschweig, Hermann-Blenk-Str. 23, 38108 Braunschweig, Germany ABSTRACT analyses. The Database Information System Characteris- ing Objects in Space (DISCOS) is the core element which provides the necessary information on the objects in the The dominating source of space debris are breakup space debris environment. DISCOS information and ad- events, mainly due to on-orbit explosions and collisions. ditional data gathered during dedicated survey campaigns Some of the events resulted in only few objects which are used to validate ESA’s Meteoroid and Space Debris might even be short-lived. For the others, on-orbit frag- Terrestrial Environment Reference model (MASTER). It ments contribute to the collision risk satellites are facing allows to assess the debris and meteoroid flux for any during their operational life. In addition, analyses of the mission on an Earth orbit. A new tool called BreakUp long-term evolution of the space debris environment rely Simulation Tool and Estimation of Risk (BUSTER) has on statistics derived from debris-generating events in the been developed for the dedicated analysis of breakup past. In this paper, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) events. It automatically extracts information from DIS- approach to analyse breakup events is presented. In the COS and the reference population in order to come up recent past the Database Information System Characteris- with the estimates the mission operators ask for. ing Objects in Space (DISCOS) was updated and an auto- mated breakup event monitoring tool established. Among Those tools will be described in Section 2, highlighting others, DISCOS information is used to update ESA’s Me- the recent upgrades and discussing the current challenges teoroid and Space Debris Terrestrial Environment Ref- in modelling debris generating events but also in the es- erence model (MASTER), which then provides popula- timation of risk. After this, results from BUSTER for re- tion inputs to long-term environment evolution analyses. cent breakup events are presented in Section 3 along with Recent upgrades and current approaches shall be high- a first attempt to validate risk estimates via a Conjunction lighted and discussed. Data Message (CDM) analysis. Keywords: Space debris; breakup; fragmentation; DIS- Besides operational aspects for current missions, an in- COS; MASTER. crease in the knowledge on breakups in Earth orbits ben- efits assessments of the long-term evolution of the space debris environment. Many of today’s state-of-the-art models rely on assumptions for the traffic model that 1. INTRODUCTION are derived from the past. Examples include the yearly launch rate, disposal rates but also explosion rates. For the latter, many past studies assumed an optimistic sce- The breakup of the NOAA 16 satellite in November 2015, nario where passivation would effectively lead to no ex- at a mean altitude of about 850 km, resulted in more than plosions in the future. Looking at the past few years in 450 fragments1 that are currently being tracked by the Section 4 the question is whether applying a zero explo- U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN). Shortly after the sion rate can be really justified from the data at hand. event, ESA’s Space Debris Office (SDO) started to eval- uate the risk increase for the currently operated missions by ESA. With some of the Sentinel spacecraft being oper- ated close to an altitude of 800 km, the mission operators 2. SPACE DEBRIS TOOLS were interested in an estimate of the additional risk due to that breakup and thus the expected increase in the number of collision avoidance manoeuvres for the entire mission 2.1. DISCOS span. There are several tools the SDO applies to perform such Information on launches and launch vehicles, spacecraft properties and much more is provided by DISCOS for 1https://www.space-track.org, as of April 7, 2017 all trackable, unclassified objects. DISCOS plays a cru- Proc. 7th European Conference on Space Debris, Darmstadt, Germany, 18–21 April 2017, published by the ESA Space Debris Office Ed. T. Flohrer & F. Schmitz, (http://spacedebris2017.sdo.esoc.esa.int, June 2017) cial role in daily activities at the SDO, as it is used in Delta upper stage There were several events for the routine collision avoidance, for re-entry analyses and the Delta second stage due to residual propel- contingency support. Moreover, it is currently accessed lants until depletion burns were introduced in by more than 130 users via the DISCOSweb platform2 1981 [6]. with information being exploited in various activities and SL-12 ullage motor The Blok D/DM upper stages scientific studies. of the Proton rocket used two ullage motors to support the main engine. They were released The currently ongoing transition to DISCOS 3 includes as the main engine performed its final burn. long awaited upgrades: for example, an object path his- tory that can reflect objects being released from other Titan Transtage The upper stage of the Titan 3A objects, or the association of debris objects to specific rocket used a hypergolic fuel oxidizer combi- events in space. For breakup events the approach so far nation. was rather static, meaning that a table provided informa- Briz-M The fourth stage of the Proton launcher is tion on individual events and was updated whenever a used to insert satellites into higher orbits. new event was confirmed. However, there was no pro- Ariane upper stage cess to keep monitoring past events for updates. With Breakups for the H8 and H10 the introduction of BUSTER (Section 3) all events are cryogenic stages were observed, most likely now being monitored for newly added fragments to the due to overpressure and subsequent bulkhead tracked population and the database is updated accord- rupture. Passivation was introduced in 1990 ingly. Moreover, the entire event database has been re- [1]. vised and more than 150 missing events (most of them Tsyklon upper stage The third stage of the classified as anomalous or yet unconfirmed) were added. Tsyklon-3 launcher used a hypergolic fuel This included a revision of the event cause classifica- oxidizer combination. tion. The main motivation here is that the modelling of Zenit-2 upper stage The second stage of the Zenit breakup events (Section 2.2.1) clearly benefits from more 2 launcher used an RP-1/Liquid oxygen pro- detailed assessments of the breakup cause. In Figure 1 pellant. the status of DISCOS 2 is shown according to the former classification. Electrical Most of the events in this category happened due to an overcharging and subsequent explosion of Propulsion the batteries. A special class has been defined for the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin- 107 (37%) istration (NOAA) satellites: DMSP/NOAA class Based on the Television and InfraRed Observation Satellite (TIROS-N) satellite bus, some of the satellites in this se- Unknown 83 (28%) 8 (3%) Collision 11 (4%) ries suffered from battery explosions. Battery 27 (9%) Accidental For subsystems that showed design flaws ul- timately leading to breakups in some cases. This in- 56 (19%) Aerodynamics cludes, for example, the breakup of Hitomi (Astro- H) in 2016 or the sub-class of Oko satellites: Deliberate Cosmos 862 class The Oko missile early warning satellites were launched into Molniya orbits. Figure 1. Assessed event cause for the fragmentation Each satellite carried an explosive charge in or- event database in DISCOS 2. Event counts and percent- der to destroy it in case of a malfunction. Re- ages (in parantheses) are given. portedly, control of this mechanism was unre- liable resulting in an explosion for many of the satellites [2]. The new classification scheme is the following: Aerodynamics A breakup most often caused by an over- pressure due to atmospheric drag. Collision There have been several collisions observed Propulsion: Stored energy for non-passivated between catalogued objects. In the case of the Cos- propulsion-related subsystems might lead to an mos 2251 and Iridium 33 event in 2009, two large explosion, for example due to thermal stress. fragment clouds were created. A sub-class are small Several sub-classes are defined for rocket stages (and thus uncatalogued) impactors: that showed repeated breakup events: Small impactor Also a collision, but there is no ex- 2https://discosweb.esoc.esa.int plicit evidence for an impactor. Changes in the angular momentum, attitude and subsys- Cosmos 699 class For many of the ELINT Ocean tem failures are, however, indirect indications Reconnaissance Satellites (EORSAT) a of an impact. In the case of Sentinel 1A in Au- breakup was observed during the orbital de- gust 2016, the impact feature in the solar array cay. Explanations for the event cause include wing could even be captured in a photograph deliberate, residual propellants and batteries - via the camera used to verify solar panel de- but no cause was ever confirmed [2, 11]. ployment after launch. Delta 4 class events with several catalogued ob- Deliberate: all intentional breakup events. There might jects for the Delta Cryogenic Second Stages be several reasons to destroy spacecraft deliberately, (DCSS). including the testing of weaponry and avoiding de- L-14B class The third stage of the Long March 4B sign features to be disclosed by inspection. (CZ-4B) launcher used a hypergolic propel- lant. ASAT Anti-satellite tests. H-IIA class The second stage of the H-IIA Payload recovery failure some satellites were de- launcher used a cryogenic propellant.
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