Astrodynamics Commons^™

Earth Magnetosphere Model Investigations For Coupled Orbit-Attitude Space Debris Perturbations, Eiji Shibata, Carolin Frueh Dr.

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

As more objects are placed into orbit, collisions become increasingly more likely, leading to a so-called Kessler Syndrome: collisions between existing debris creates more debris, causing a cascading effect of larger amounts of debris being put into orbit, even in the absence of launches, making future space fairing difficult or impossible. Natural forces influence the orbit and attitude of uncontrolled debris objects. The natural plasma environment can lead to space object charging. The subsequent orbital movement in the geomagnetosphere induces Lorentz forces that act both on the orbit and attitude of the space object. Those forces have not been investigated …