Drag sails for space debris mitigation

Abstract

The prudence for satellites to have a mitigation or deorbiting strategy has been brought about by the ever increasing amount of debris in Earth orbit. Drag augmentation is a potentially passive method for de-orbiting in LEO but its collision risk mitigation efficiency is sometimes underestimated by not taking all the relevant factors into account. This paper shows that using drag augmentation from a deployable drag-sail to de-orbit a satellite in LEO will lead to a reduction in collision risk. In order to support this finding, the models that are needed in order to evaluate the collision risk of a decaying object under drag conditions are presented. A comparison is performed between the simpler Area-Time-Product (ATP) and more precise collision risk analysis, and the effects that are overlooked in the simple ATP calculation are explained.