CNUCE - Istituto del CNR Via S. Maria, 36 56126 PISA ITALY
During the last decade there has been a growing awareness that artificial orbital debris generated by space activities could imperil, in a not too far future, the exploitation of near Earth space. At present spacecraft and mission design, as well as operations (e.g. for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station) are already influenced by debris threat considerations, and countermeasures must be devised.
Apart from the need to better characterize the orbital debris environment down to sub-millimeter particles, there is also a pressing necessity of simulation tools able to model in a realistic way the long term evolution of space debris and the actual mitigation effects of space policy measures.
In the last two years two different computer models have been developed in Pisa to study the evolution of the debris population. With them it is possible to simulate different scenarios for the future launch policies and to highlight the areas of incertainty which affect the long term predictions.
The results of our long term evolution analysis will be presented in some detail, along with an analysis of the sensitivity of the results upon the possible variations of the parameters appearing in the models.