Dynamical Evolution of Debris Clouds in GEO

With the goal of helping the optical observers in identifying and characterizing some debris clusters in GEO, three fragmentations of a typical communications satellite have been modeled in GEO using CLDSIM with varying DV distributions (nominal, nominal/5, nominal/10), and the resulting fragments were propagated for 72 years, saving the results at intermediate time steps. The evolution of 10 cm and larger fragments shows that, as expected, the lower the DV case the lower the overall debris dispersion over time. Moreover in all cases the debris clouds remained clearly recognizable throughout the period considered and they occupy a relatively small and compact area of the i-W plot for most of the time.