Introducing MEDEE- A New Orbital Debris Evolutionary Model

In early 2012, CNES decided to focus some of its efforts on the development of an orbital debris evolutionary model in order to have a better insight on the issues concerning the long-term sustainability of space activities. As a consequence of this decision, since May 2012 CNES has started the development of MEDEE (Modelling the Evolution of Debris in the Earth's Environment). This paper is intended to give a first insight on MEDEE after almost a year of development. A description of the general structure of the model, the algorithms that have been implemented and those to be implemented shortly as well as the validation of the model by comparison with reference space debris evolutionary models will be presented on this paper.