Approaches to Near Term Conjunction Risk Assessment

This paper examines prompt consequences of collisions among objects and satellite explosions in Earth Orbit. We present new techniques for the most likely collisions, which do not involve the entire mass of the objects. We examine collisions in Geostationary and highly inclined orbits. Our test cases are the recent close approach of Intelsat 702 and Raduga 1-7 and the precedent setting collision of Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251.