Orbital Debris in Earth Orbit: Operations, Stability, Control, and Market Formation
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866917539681927168 |
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| author | Turyshev, Slava G. |
| author_facet | Turyshev, Slava G. |
| contents | Orbital debris is a nonlinear control problem in a stratified orbital environment, not a static inventory. This paper develops a reduced-order shell-and-size framework that connects collision-rate scaling, fragment-production gain, natural and controlled sinks, and orbital residence time to intervention ranking and procurement design. The formulation identifies three dominant control levers for near-term orbital sustainability: high-confidence disposal and short post-failure residence time for new spacecraft; reduced encounter-plane covariance for the high-risk conjunction tail; and retirement or deflection of the residual hazard stock of long-lived inactive bodies. A source-gain/sink stability margin separates shells that are operationally crowded but dynamically damped from shells that are dynamically amplifying. The analysis distinguishes the traffic-driven workload peak near 500--600 km from the persistence-driven hazard peak near $\sim$850 km, where inactive mass and long lifetime dominate future fragment production. Current public statistics report $\sim$44,870 tracked objects and more than 16,200 tonnes of material in Earth orbit, with model populations far larger below routine-catalog thresholds. The resulting intervention stack is rapid post-mission disposal, targeted covariance improvement for high-risk encounters, selective just-in-time collision avoidance or active removal of high-hazard derelicts. The appropriate procurement metric is not the number of objects removed, but verified reduction in time-integrated environmental hazard: verified disposal, verified reduction in ambiguous high-risk conjunctions, verified reduction in residual hazard stock. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_23552 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Orbital Debris in Earth Orbit: Operations, Stability, Control, and Market Formation Turyshev, Slava G. Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Orbital debris is a nonlinear control problem in a stratified orbital environment, not a static inventory. This paper develops a reduced-order shell-and-size framework that connects collision-rate scaling, fragment-production gain, natural and controlled sinks, and orbital residence time to intervention ranking and procurement design. The formulation identifies three dominant control levers for near-term orbital sustainability: high-confidence disposal and short post-failure residence time for new spacecraft; reduced encounter-plane covariance for the high-risk conjunction tail; and retirement or deflection of the residual hazard stock of long-lived inactive bodies. A source-gain/sink stability margin separates shells that are operationally crowded but dynamically damped from shells that are dynamically amplifying. The analysis distinguishes the traffic-driven workload peak near 500--600 km from the persistence-driven hazard peak near $\sim$850 km, where inactive mass and long lifetime dominate future fragment production. Current public statistics report $\sim$44,870 tracked objects and more than 16,200 tonnes of material in Earth orbit, with model populations far larger below routine-catalog thresholds. The resulting intervention stack is rapid post-mission disposal, targeted covariance improvement for high-risk encounters, selective just-in-time collision avoidance or active removal of high-hazard derelicts. The appropriate procurement metric is not the number of objects removed, but verified reduction in time-integrated environmental hazard: verified disposal, verified reduction in ambiguous high-risk conjunctions, verified reduction in residual hazard stock. |
| title | Orbital Debris in Earth Orbit: Operations, Stability, Control, and Market Formation |
| topic | Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23552 |