P²-ROTECT: Prediction, Protection & Reduction of OrbiTal Exposure to Collision Threats
P²-ROTECT is a European collaboration which aims at providing the space community with solutions to better deal with the space debris. From navigation to internet services, our daily lives rely heavily on satellites. However, space debris, which comprises broken-up, exploded or abandoned space hardware, has been a significant threat for space missions. Our project is oriented towards low-cost solutions (better prediction of collisions of space assets with the space debris, better protection of missions from damage caused by these collisions and action on the debris environment to remove directly the source of the threat) to contribute to space surveillance and improvement of collision prediction methods, while raising situational awareness.
In order to work with concrete examples depending on orbit types, three missions of interest for the EU are analysed: Sentinel-1 in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), GALILEO constellation in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and Meteosat Third Generation, the weather observation constellation in Geostationary Orbit (GEO). These three missions give a good distribution of orbits and of different problems caused by collisions.
P²-ROTECT WORKSHOP PRESENTATIONS ARE NOW AVAILABLE ON THE NEWS & EVENTS PAGE
A P²-ROTECT workshop was held on the 20th and the 21st of March, 2012, at TÜBITAK UZAY in Ankara, Turkey and it was open to the public. The 1.5-day workshop was about the three ways of reducing vulnerability: better prediction of collisions of space assets with the space debris, better protection of missions from damage caused by these collisions and action on the debris environment to remove directly the source of the threat.
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| GALILEO is a European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), that is intended to provide measurements down to the
meter range. It will consist of 30 satellites in total and it is expected to be operational in 2014. reference: OHB System AG |
Sentinel-1 is a polar-orbiting, all-weather, day-and-night radar imaging mission for land and ocean services. The first Sentinel-1 satellite is planned for launch in 2013. reference: Thales Alenia Space |
The MTG is a European weather system satellite programme, that is expected to start providing data in 2016 or so.
reference: Thales Alenia Space |
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To provide adequate solutions to the space debris problem, two cases must be considered depending on whether space debris is routinely tracked/catalogued or not. In the first case, pieces of space debris are large enough to be routinely tracked by sensors and catalogued. They correspond to objects whose typical sizes are above 10 cm in LEO and up to 50-100 cm in GEO and their number is estimated to be around 14,000 by the US means. Collision with such debris most often is catastrophic for a spacecraft but, on the other hand, it is also predictable. The enhancement of space debris catalogues (lowering size and increasing accuracy), the enhancement of prediction reliability and the removal of risky debris can be seen as development of mitigation measures. In the second case, where space debris pieces are not tracked, their number is not exactly known but corresponds to approximately some billions and collision cannot be predicted. The only way to reduce vulnerability is to reduce the effect of debris collision via new satellite designs and even new mission designs.
Some information you can find here:
- A brochure and a press release representing the project.
- A presentation of the project, from a speech given by Jeffrey Apeldoorn during the Space Debris Theme Day at the Space Studies Program 2011 in Graz, Austria
- A presentation of the project by Marc Scheper, at the 16th ISU Annual International Symposium in Strasbourg, France on 21-23 February, 2012
- P²-ROTECT Newsletter for March-May 2011
- P²-ROTECT Newsletter for June-August 2011
- P²-ROTECT Newsletter for September-November 2011
- An interview with Sébastien Merit about the P²-ROTECT, published in Futura-Sciences (in French).
- Presentation of the vulnerability index by Sébastien Merit, ONERA at the IAASS 2011, Versailles on October 17th 2011
Conference proceedings of the 62nd International Astronautical Congress, Cape Town:
- IMPROVEMENTS FOR SPACE MISSION PROTECTION AGAINST SPACE-DEBRIS
