著者

Yuri MATSUSHITA Yasuhiro YOSHIMURA Toshiya HANADA Yuki ITAYA Tadanori FUKUSHIMA

出版者

THE JAPAN SOCIETY FOR AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE SCIENCES

雑誌

TRANSACTIONS OF THE JAPAN SOCIETY FOR AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE SCIENCES, AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY JAPAN (ISSN:18840485)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.20, pp.10-15, 2022 (Released:2022-02-05)

参考文献数

11

被引用文献数

2

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This paper aims to assess the risk of mission termination for a large constellation of satellites in a low-Earth orbit. Many large constellations will be deployed to provide broadband network services using thousands of satellites. There is concern that such large constellations will have a serious impact on the long-term sustainability of outer space activities due to the rapid increase in population. First, therefore, the authors conducted an assessment under nominal activities (referred to as “business-as-usual”) on the basis of a prediction by ESA’s MASTER-2009 and NASA standard breakup model 2001 revision. The assessment found that nearly one catastrophic collision may happen in a large constellation, generating more than two million fragments as small as 1 mm in size. Second, the authors conducted a further assessment assuming a hypothetical collision of a satellite in a large constellation using the NASA standard breakup model and a spherical finite element model adopted in ESA’s MASTER-2009. In consequence, another catastrophic collision may happen to a large constellation, generating approximately a half-million fragments as small as 1 mm in size. Therefore, such catastrophic collisions and resulting secondary collisions should be prevented for large constellations.