On Bunching of the Orbital Debris Microparticles in Circular and Elliptic Orbits

In the presented work we estimate the possible bunching of space debris microparticles due to the drag changes in near-Earth circular and elliptical orbits caused by quasi-periodic changes in atmospheric density. The study shows that collective effects in orbital evolution of microparticles are essentially displayed for high elliptical orbits where variations of the atmosphere density along the orbit and lifetime of the microparticles are relatively large. However there is no limiting distribution. The clusters are formed and destroyed several times during orbital lifetime of the microparticles.