Space debris mitigation: history and perspectives

Since the realization of the danger represented by the space debris it became clear that an effective prevention and mitigation action was needed to control the proliferation of the Earth orbiting population of objects. Those actions were indeed able to partly stabilize the growth of the population, but more aggressive measures should be undertaken in the future decades, also in view of the proposed launch of the mega constellations of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) which are prone to change in radical way the traffic and operations in this already crowded region of space. It is now clear that the impact of orbital debris on the space activities should be reduced tackling the problem from different points of view, including prevention, mitigation and protection. These goals can only be achieved through a global approach that considers, from the outset of a space mission, opposing and challenging constraints for the space environment preservation, the spacecraft survivability in the harsh space environment and the safety of humans on ground. Hence a new paradigm in the planning of space missions has to be considered, where the space debris issue is central, from different perspectives: theoretical, technological (hardware and software) and political. In the talk, first, a brief history of the past mitigation measures and of their main effects will be presented. Then a summary of the most recent findings and proposals in the field, mainly obtained in the framework of the H2020 ReDSHIFT project, will be presented.