The COLA Collision Avoidance Method

In the following we present a collision avoidance method named COLA. The method has been designed to predict collisions for Earth orbiting spacecraft on any orbits, including orbit changes, with other space-born objects. The point in time of a collision and the collision probability are determined. To guarantee effective processing the COLA method uses a modular design and is composed of several components which are either developed within this work or deduced from existing algorithms: A filtering module, the close approach determination, the collision detection and the collision probability calculation. A software tool which implements the COLA method has been verified using various test cases built from sample missions. This software has been implemented in the C++ programming language and serves as a universal collision detection tool at LSE Space Engineering & Operations AG.