FRAGMENTATION EVENT DEBRIS FIELD EVOLUTION USING 3D VOLUMETRIC RISK ASSESSMENT

The evolution of the debris field generated by an on-orbit explosion or collision fragmentation event is of critical concern to space operators and SSA organizations. The debris field can be initially generated by combining one of the available breakup models containing imparted velocity and fragment size distributions, with basic first principles such as conservation of mass, momentum and energy. Previous relevant techniques for simulating this are examined. Existing two-dimensional debris field evolution and dynamics approaches are extended to three dimensions. To do this, the full set of possible Lambert solutions is employed, to include multi-revolution solutions. The resulting pdf distributions are dynamically shown in three dimensions for various sample collision and explosion cases, in several important orbital classes. Finally, we evaluate the active satellites potentially put at risk by the evolving debris cloud.