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2011
Conference Paper
Titel
Improvements for space mission protection against space-debris
Abstract
The increasing amount of space-debris around Earth is becoming a more significant threat to the proper functioning of satellites in all orbits. To minimize the impact of this ever increasing threat, different strategies to enhance mission protection are being established by a European consortium composed in a multi-disciplinary manner, involving research organizations and academia, on the one side and industrial companies and SME on the other. The work is being performed within the EU's 7th Framework Programme as a collaborative project in the activity "Strengthening of space foundations". Within the proposed paper, first the current environment situation will be defined, after which the way forward within the study will be defined based on; existing space debris/meteoroids protection technology for human spaceflight spacecraft, current understanding of post-structural penetration kinematics and current regulations in place in order to mitigate debris generation. The ma in fields to be elaborated in the study are: improvement of spacecraft protection by innovative shielding, enhanced redundancy and design; spacecraft self-protection; fractionated mission design; improved mission operations; maintenance and repair. For each of the fields, an overview will be given in the performed work and which steps will be performed within the rest of the study. As the space-debris environment around Earth is not constant and changes significantly from orbit to orbit, it was decided to orientate the proposed strategies around three representative missions: Sentinel 1 (Earth radar Observation mission in LEO - SSO 693 km altitude) Galileo in MEO (Navigation mission in MEO - around 23000 km altitude) MTG in GEO (Meteosat mission in GEO).