Orbital Debris in Earth Orbit: Operations, Stability, Control, and Market Formation
Slava G. Turyshev

TL;DR
This paper presents a reduced-order framework for understanding and managing orbital debris, highlighting key control levers and intervention strategies for sustainable space operations.
Contribution
It introduces a novel shell-and-size model linking collision dynamics, debris sources, and control measures to guide orbital debris mitigation.
Findings
Identifies three dominant control levers for orbital sustainability.
Distinguishes traffic-driven and persistence-driven debris peaks.
Proposes a hazard reduction metric based on environmental impact.
Abstract
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…
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