Challenging Aspects in Evaluating the Potential Danger of Space Objects Breakups and Collisions for Space Flights

Abstract

Abstract. The increasing near-Earth space (NES) exploration with its technogeneous contamination, and the resulting growth of space objects breakups risk for space flights makes more urgent the problem of estimating this danger, an adequate and accurate estimate being very important. In practice, given the complexity of obtaining the accurate estimates of this characteristic because of the large uncertainty in the initial data, it is a common practice simplifying the calculations, neglecting a set of factors, included some essential ones. In this work, some challenging aspects in evaluating and using the estimates of potential danger of space objects breakups and possible ways of improving these estimates are discussed.