Space Debris: Life Cycle Analysis and Preventive Mitigation

• Grant number: 22/15075-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2023
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Aerospace Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Denilson Paulo Souza dos Santos
• Grantee: Giovanna Mendes Cruz Alves
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus Experimental São João da Boa Vista. São João da Boa Vista , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The advance of space exploration, since the beginning of the space race, showed the technological importance and potential of the use of the space environment providing important applications such as satellites, exploration missions to other planets, telecommunications, remote sensing, and, together with innovation and indiscriminate use, the need for preservation of this environment arose. Space debris, which is objects created by humans and are in orbit around the Earth, but which no longer play any useful functions, such as rocket stages, mission debris, dead satellites, pollute the region around the earth and are a potential cause of damage to future missions and damage due to the fall on the Earth's surface. By analogy to conventional environmental impacts, the potential release of debris or fragment generation can be considered as the emission of an environmental stressor that damages the orbital "natural" resource that supports space activities. It is proposed to systematically integrate the impact of debris emission in the orbital resource to expand the scope of life cycle evaluation (LCA) for space systems. This work proposes the study of the life cycle of space debris; together the simulation of a cloud of space debris, each particle analyzed individually, in the restricted problem of three bodies (PRTC), where the mass of each particle is negligible when compared to the mass of the primary (Earth-Moon). The behavior of the mi cloud in the gravitational field of the m1 and m2 primary subject to the action of perturbative forces (Atmospheric drag, J2, J3 and C22).