A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO THE SPACE DEBRIS MITIGATION

Abstract

The space activities in almost every orbital regime are now jeopardized by the continuous growth of the space debris populations. To prevent the proliferation of the space debris in Earth orbit it is necessary to tackle the problem from dierent perspectives, exploiting the latest theoretical and experimental knowledge in dierent elds, such as astrodynamics, spacecraft engineering and legal studies, to address four main pillars: prevention, protection, mitigation and regulation. In this respect the European Community nanced a large H2020 project named ReDSHIFT whose goal is to nd passive means to mitigate the proliferation of space debris. A short summary of the project and of its main ndings is given in the paper, with particular emphasis on the more theoretical part, related to the simulation of long term evolutionary scenarios of the whole space debris environment and to the mapping of the Low Earth Orbit phase space, looking for passive dynamical de-orbiting solutions.