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Effect of Mega-Constellations on Collision Risk in Space

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Effect of Mega-Constellations on Collision Risk in Space EFFECT OF MEGA-CONSTELLATIONS ON COLLISION RISK IN SPACE C. Alvaro´ Arroyo-Parejo, Noelia Sanchez-Ortiz,´ and Raul´ Dom´ınguez-Gonzalez´ DEIMOS Space S.L.U., Ronda de Poniente 19, Tres Cantos, Madrid, 28760 Spain, Email: fcarlos.arroyo, noelia.sanchez, [email protected] ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION During the last decade, the space sector has been wit- nessing a change in trend, giving way to what is cur- The number of companies aiming to launch mega con- rently known as “New Space”. This change in trend has stellations into space is increasing. The majority of them led, among other things, to the miniaturisation of satel- are supposed to be deployed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) lites (nanosatellites, picosatellites, etc,) and their mass regions where the population of space debris is most con- production by private companies. According to the lat- centrated. This change in the industry requires develop- est ESA’s environmental space report [1], the number ments in collision risk analysis since, in case of satellite of objects in the low Earth orbit (LEO) regions contin- failure, the probability that one of them collides with a ues to increase, this being the orbital regime with the piece of space debris is not negligible, and the satellite largest number of active objects. In addition, the largest would potentially break apart creating more space debris. number of objects in this regime corresponds, nowa- Therefore, a collision would ultimately increase the over- days, to commercial missions. It is in this context that all collision risk, leading to the well-known Kessler syn- the emergence of commercial proposals related to world- drome. wide broadband constellations projects becomes impor- tant, as they threaten the future sustainability of space and space operations. These mega-constellation plans, from This paper discusses the investigation of how mega- private companies (Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper, constellations will affect the space environment in terms etc.), consist of thousands of satellites located at LEO of collision risk. At first, an overview of the different or very low Earth orbit (VLEO) regimes in which, as mega-constellations has been carried out in order to pro- aforementioned, the majority of current operational satel- vide orbit definition and orbital lifetime for different sce- lites and space debris objects reside. The main prob- narios. Then, different methods and mathematical tools lem lies within the fact that, if all these projects were to compute the collision risk have been considered. ESA- to come to fruition, the number of tracked objects cur- MASTER has been used to compute the flux during the rently in space could triple in a few years. Increasing complete orbital lifetime with the purpose of estimating the number of objects raises the collision risk. The risk the mean number of collisions and the impact probabil- of causing a chain reaction due to the collision between ity for the entire constellation. Since these constellations space debris objects (the well-known Kessler syndrome are formed by hundreds or thousands of satellites, the en- [2]) has been analysed in numerous studies [3,4,5,6,7], dogenous and exogenous encounters have been also com- concluding that in the event of such collisions, the LEO puted for objects in a mega-constellation. Thus, the im- regime could become inaccessible or accessible at high pact of a collision cloud on the constellation has been risk, and remain so for hundreds of years, endangering characterised. This analysis has been made following two future manned flights. Owing to the aforementioned rea- different approaches: the collision of a single object of sons, several recent studies have tried to highlight how the the constellation with an external space debris, and the risk of collision would be greatly affected by the appear- failure of a satellite of the constellation which leads to a ance of these mega-constellations. Some of these studies collision with a second constellation object. The study have tried to analyse the mean number of collisions and has determined the impact on the space debris environ- the probability of collision for a constellation object and ment and the flux evolution after the encounter. Due for the whole constellation [8,9, 10]. Moreover, these to the number of objects, the constellation and the cat- analysis include each and every stage of the constella- alogue, it is necessary to optimise the evaluation of the tion: ascent, nominal orbit and disposal. Alongside these, encounters with the aim of reducing the computational the impact on the number of collision avoidance manoeu- expense of the implementation. vres that would have to be performed [9, 10], and on how different post-mission disposal (PMD) strategies would affect to reduce collision probability [11] has been anal- Keywords: mega-constellations; flux analysis; collision ysed. Both higher satellite mass and constellation orbit probability, space debris. altitude are also an important factor in terms of Collision Proc. 8th European Conference on Space Debris (virtual), Darmstadt, Germany, 20–23 April 2021, published by the ESA Space Debris Office Ed. T. Flohrer, S. Lemmens & F. Schmitz, (http://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int, May 2021) rate percentage increase (CRI) [12]. In spite of these re- [15, 16, 18]. These initial proposals placed the OneWeb searches, it is certain that these mega-constellations will constellation at an altitude of 1200 km while the Star- be operative in the coming years. Consequently, other link constellation consisted of orbits located at differ- studies have tried to evaluate how this collision risk will ent altitudes: 550, 1110, 1130, 1275 and 1325 km. In affect the design of future mega-constellations [13] or as- addition, the proposed modification of Starlink for its sess and propose ways to mitigate possible collisions that first generation has also been considered in the analy- may occur [14]. sis [17]. In this proposal, altitudes higher than 1000 km Another problem encountered when analysing these have been reduced to altitudes between 540 and 570 km. mega-constellations is the opacity and lack of informa- Also, OneWeb’s second generation proposal to increase tion in some of their data (e.g., the geometry and size the number of satellites to around 48000 for the same al- of the satellites or the the characteristics of the propul- titude will be taken into account (although the company sion subsystem). Subsequently, some of the parameters has recently stated that the number of satellites will be used during this and other studies make some assump- drastically reduced to about 6372). Furthermore, the fol- tions to characterize the problem. Fortunately, the char- lowing assumptions have been made for both constella- acteristics of the orbits used in the OneWeb and Starlink tions: constellations analysed in this study have been published through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) • The operational phase lifetime of each satellite [15, 16, 17] (as for the Amazon Kuiper project [18]). In within the constellation will be 5 years. addition, this analysis assumes that both projects take into • The operational lifetime of the total constellation consideration the international debris mitigation guide- will be 10 years. lines proposed by the United Nation’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS). In this pa- • The spacecraft failure rate will vary between 2.5% per, the collision probability risks analysed correspond and 5%. to the OneWeb and Starlink projects for two main rea- sons: they are the two projects that are currently being According to the latest ESA’s Annual Space Environment launched, and thereafter, the information on them is more Report [1], the population of objects in LEO is larger be- accessible and has been gathered in other analyses. It tween 300 km and 800 km, where the Starlink modifi- is important to underline that most of the analyses per- cation would be located. It must also be taken into ac- formed in this study have been carried out using pub- count that both the OneWeb constellation and the first lic access software tools (DRAMA software tools suite, Starlink proposal are located at altitudes above 800 km, MASTER-2009 and MASTER-8) which are provided by and therefore, both their ascent and disposal will pass the European Space Agency through the Space Debris through those altitudes increasing the flux and, thus, the User Portal (SDUP). probability of collision. However, this probability of col- The structure of this document is as follows. Section lision will be lower than that of the nominal orbit because 2 summarizes the characteristics of the orbits used, as the duration with respect to it is also shorter. In addition, well as the geometry of the satellites that form the mega- most of the tracked objects in these orbits correspond to constellations. The methodology applied in this analy- space debris which increase the indeterminacy of the ob- sis is described in Section 3. The results of the flux, jects’ orbits. This is because, currently, the catalogue of mean number of collisions, probability of collision, and tracked objects consists of those objects with diameters the impact of collision clouds are discussed in Section 4. greater than 10 cm [19] obtained through direct observa- Finally, Section 5 presents the main conclusions drawn tions; while diameters smaller than 10 cm, the catalogue from this study and possible future work. of objects is based on indirect observations and mathe- matical models, which generates a large uncertainty in the measurements [20]. 2. MAIN PARAMETERS OF MEGA- CONSTELLATIONS The Starlink (SpaceX), OneWeb (OneWeb and Airbus), and Kuiper (Amazon) mega-constellations are the three major projects proposed to provide high-speed broadband and global Internet coverage. They are classified as Non- geostationary satellite orbit systems (NGSO) [9]. Cur- rently, only the satellites of the first two constellations are being launched, and there is no information regarding the satellites of the Amazon Kuiper one, so the analysis will focus on Starlink and OneWeb.
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