Self-induced collision risk analysis for large constellations

Large constellations of communications satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) can provide considerable benefits due to the global coverage and low latency. However, they also represent a possible risk to other space users and to the long-term health of the space environment, due to the increase in associated space traffic and if appropriate debris mitigation measures are not implemented. An assessment of the potential impact of large constellations on the space debris environment has been performed. This paper describes the analysis of long-term projections incorporating a large constellation made using evolutionary codes, with a particular focus on the detected “self-induced” conjunctions between constellation satellites and the reliability of the collision prediction method. The results show that with a sufficient number of Monte Carlo runs, the collision algorithm is able to compute reliable estimates of the constellation self-induced collision probability.