Comparison of debris flux models

Abstract

The availability of models to estimate the impact risk from the man-made space debris and the natural meteoroid environment is essential for both, manned and unmanned satellite missions. Various independent tools based on different approaches have been developed in the past years. Due to an increased knowledge of the debris environment and its sources, e.g. from improved measurement capabilities, these models could be updated regularly, providing more detailed and more reliable simulations. This paper addresses an in-depth, quantitative comparison of widely distributed debris flux models which were recently updated, namely ESA's MASTER model, NASA's ORDEM 2000 and the Russian SPDA 2000 model. The comparison is performed by applying the models to a large number of target orbits specified by a grid in terms of impactor size (6 gridpoints), target orbit perigee altitude (16 gridpoints), and target orbit inclination (15 gridpoints). These results provide a characteristic diagram of integral fluxes for all models, which will be compared. Further to this, the models are applied to orbits of particular interest as e.g. the ISS orbit or a sun-synchronous orbit.