Identifying the 50 statistically-most-concerning derelict objects in LEO

Looking out for a sustainable space

“…Large clusters of derelict LEO rocket bodies have been identified as high priority candidates for future ADR missions (Liou 2011;Rossi et al 2020;McKnight et al 2021;Maclay & Mcknight 2021). Another key target is ESA's defunct eight-tonne satellite, Envisat, which resides in a densely populated region and is known to be tumbling (Kucharski et al 2014;Pittet et al 2018).…”

A new landscape for space applications

“…Germany has also switched off the eROSITA telescope flying on the Russian Spektr-RG satellite, launched in 2019 to map black holes, as the country halted all science co-operation with Russia. The instrument had completed four out of eight intended all-sky survey passes before it went on safe mode (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, 2022 [40]).…”

Policies for incentivizing orbital debris assessment and remediation

“…Most scholars understand risk as the product of the probability of breakup or collision and the potential damage such an event would cause. However, in the past ten years, many indices have been proposed, centering on issues including: criticality, which assesses the probability that an object's breakup would pose a long-term threat to its orbital environment; severity, which places particular weight on the danger posed to other nearby objects by a breakup; and, most recently, remediation priority, which selects targets for removal from orbit [14]- [16]. The last of these should be noted for its highly international nature, as a collaboration between experts with diverse approaches to risk assessment.…”

“…The last of these should be noted for its highly international nature, as a collaboration between experts with diverse approaches to risk assessment. They collectively found that the highest risk objects in LEO were almost exclusively rocket bodies, with all of the top 20 resulting from launches by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1985 and 2004 [16]. In short, different priorities and assumptions lead modelers to similar, but not identical, conclusions about objects' risk.…”