Conjunction Risk Assessment and Avoidance Maneuver Planning Tools

Abstract

In the collision avoidance operation, earlier estimation of possible critical conjunctions among other events is important to handle critical situations promptly and efficiently. Additionally, earlier estimation of the possible avoidance maneuver strategy is also important due to the limited time until the closest approach. The presented tools for the collision risk assessment and the avoidance maneuver planning are based on the collision probability and the relative position visualization in the B-plane. Visualization of the object trajectory due to the orbit uncertainty and also due to the avoidance maneuver facilitates an estimation of the possible risk and the maneuver effect. Application of the tools to the operational collision avoidance process is also presented, together with the conjunction handling of two operational satellites flying in a very close formation, where the tools are especially useful to handle the complicated operational requirements.