LightForce photon-pressure collision avoidance: Efficiency analysis in the current debris environment and long-term...

Area of Science:

• Space Engineering
• Orbital Mechanics
• Astrodynamics

Background:

• Space debris poses a significant threat to operational satellites and future space missions.
• Existing collision avoidance methods are limited in scope and effectiveness.
• The LightForce system proposes a novel approach using ground-based lasers for active debris mitigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the short-term efficiency of the LightForce space debris collision avoidance scheme.
• To develop and present a simulation methodology for assessing LightForce's long-term impact on the space debris environment.
• To evaluate the potential of ground-based lasers in mitigating orbital collisions.

Main Methods:

• Simulated a network of 20 kW lasers with adaptive optics for collision avoidance.
• Utilized the Two Line Element (TLE) catalog for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) objects.
• Performed all-on-all conjunction analysis over a one-year period, comparing baseline scenarios with LightForce active.
• Developed a highly parallel simulation approach on the NASA Pleiades supercomputer.

Main Results:

• The LightForce system demonstrated the capability to mitigate over 85% of conjunctions in the current debris environment.
• The scheme has the potential to reduce the expected number of collisions in LEO by an order of magnitude.
• Conjunctions involving massive objects remain a challenge, but mitigation of smaller objects is feasible.

Conclusions:

• The LightForce system shows significant promise for short-term space debris collision avoidance.
• Further research and simulation are necessary to fully understand its long-term effects on orbital debris evolution.
• The proposed simulation approach provides a robust framework for evaluating active debris mitigation strategies.