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Drones, UAVs, and Space Debris
Published in Ahmed F. El-Sayed, Foreign Object Debris and Damage in Aviation, 2022
Space debris can be as big as a large rocket body (over 10 m or 33 ft long) down to microscopic particles that are barely visible. The ones that we are most worried about are those larger than 3 mm. Categories of space debris and its quantities and tracking features are given in Table 5.6.
Risk Assessment of Space Activities in Light of Space Debris Issue
Published in M. Madi, O. Sokolova, Space Debris Peril: Pathways to Opportunities, 2020
There are risks linked to space debris evolving in outer space and creating a risk of collision with an active space object (satellites or even worse to the International Space Station), but there are also risks associated with the re-entry of debris into the atmosphere back to earth. We have a very limited history of space debris accidents on earth. There is of course the well-known re-entry of Kosmos 954 that crashed on the Canadian Arctic in 1979 and that thankfully did not harmed the population. However, this crash led to a nuclear leak and negotiations took place between the USSR and Canada to adjust the damages and the associated indemnification. With respect to bodily injury, as of today, only one human being has been hit in 1997 (22 January) by a fifteen centimetres space debris while walking in a park. In this case, no legal case has been brought neither in front of national jurisdiction, nor international arbitration court.
Environmental regulation
Published in Francis Lyall, Paul B. Larsen, Space Law, 2017
The threat to spacecraft and to astronauts from space debris is very real. Space debris is monitored by the radar facilities of a number of states, and their results are co-ordinated through the US Air Force Space Command. Satellites and the Shuttle have altered orbit to avoid debris, but collisions have occurred.159 Science acknowledges that more will happen.160 The debris field round the Earth continues to grow, worryingly in respect of telecommunications since the geostationary orbit is a ‘debris cluster area’ which gravity will not cleanse within any foreseeable period.161 The issue therefore arises as to the steps to be taken to limit the problem. Obviously steps have to be taken, but for lawyers the question is whether binding legal obligation is the best route. As indicated there is the Liability Convention,162 but its Art. 3 makes proof of fault necessary to constitute liability for damage caused by a space object elsewhere than on the surface of the Earth or to aircraft in flight. There certainly is a case for a mutual insurance fund to meet damages claims caused by orbital debris to be contributed to by the space-active.163 There may also be a case for the encouraging of dedicated salvage firms to tackle the recovery of spent satellites through the grant of subsidies from a consortium of space agencies and commercial space users, but in the interim, basically the creation of space debris has to be lessened.
Model predictive control-based control algorithm for a target-chaser maneuvering situation
Published in Advanced Robotics, 2021
A. S. M. Gilimalage, S. Kimura
Currently, public and private organizations around the world are seeking solutions to tackle the space debris problem. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) are among the public organizations that have initiated debris removal methods. JAXA proposed deployment of tethers as a solution to debris mitigation in the KITE mission [2] carried out in 2016. ClearSpace-1 [3] is supervised by ESA to conduct space debris removal using a satellite equipped with robotic arms. Private companies such as Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Astroscale are also conducting demonstrations to find viable solutions to the space debris problem. The former has a planned demonstration mission, Debris Removal Unprecedented Micro-Satellite, to capture a mock object using an extendable boom as the capture mechanism [4]. Astroscale’s ELSA-d is based on magnetic structures placed on the target itself for retrieval through the capture process [5].
Stochastic model predictive control-based countermeasure methodology for satellites against indirect kinetic cyber-attacks
Published in International Journal of Control, 2023
M. Amin Alandihallaj, Nima Assadian, Khashayar Khorasani
One of the categorical and profound effects of using the space environment for various military, civilian, scientific, and commercial applications is the increase in the population of objects in the near-Earth environment. The number of space objects has significantly increased over time since the space age began, so that millions of space debris having different sizes alongside the growing population of satellites are increasing the risk of collision and threatening the operating systems around the Earth.