Previous talks at the SCCS Colloquium

Albert Noswitz: Modeling Upcoming Megaconstellations in Space Debris Environment Simulations

SCCS Colloquium |


In the near future, upcoming megaconstellations will drastically increase the number of operating satellites in low Earth orbit. They will operate in an environment with a large amount of space debris and increase the already existing chance of collisions. The simulation software LADDS aims to predict the evolution of space debris in order to assess risks associated with operations such as the insertion of constellations. The purpose of this work is to add constellations into the simulation LADDS. This is done by firstly implementing a component which generates constellation data from orbital shell parameters. Then, a component is implemented to insert the generated constellation input into the simulation over time. This enables the inclusion of constellation insertion scenarios in the simulation. An 11.5-year simulation run with the implemented functionality and a realistic constellation insertion scenario of about 50,000 satellites brought results in which constellations were involved in over 60% of all conjunctions. A second simulation run demonstrated that the altitude in which a constellation operates significantly influences the collision risk.

Bachelor's thesis submission talk (Informatics). Albert is advised by Fabio Gratl and Pablo Gómez.