Determining leaders in a cloud of space debris

Abstract

A methodology has been devised to compute the maximum of the minimum distances between different objects in a space debris cloud. By using the orbital information of the pieces that make up the cloud, a threshold distance is defined to determine which pieces are close enough to each other. The closest pieces are then considered associated objects, and those pieces of debris that have the most associated objects are identified as the leaders of the cloud. Once the leaders of a debris cloud are identified, the orbital dynamics of those leaders can provide preliminary information about the dynamics of their associated objects. The methodology was applied to a specific space debris cloud composed of 255 cataloged pieces, identifying four leaders which have 43 associated objects. Thus, the dynamics of only four pieces of space debris (0.015% of the cloud) are similar to the dynamics of 43 pieces of debris (17% of the cloud). This methodology could be extrapolated to other debris clouds, making the search for leaders a simple and rapid tool.