Join the 5th Space Debris Re-entry Workshop

The 5th International Space Debris Re-entry Workshop will take place on 2 December 2020 and is organised fully virtually.

This workshop aims to address the side effects of the increased traffic to orbit which triggered a renewed interest in the practicalities of having objects re-entering uncontrolled after the end of their mission.

The participants will discuss the following open problems arising from the increase in uncontrolled re-entry “traffic”:

The non-uniform distribution of the Earth gravity field and atmospheric density, combined with the forecast of space weather indices, imply multi-modal distributions on reaching the re-entry interface which differ when the timescale goes from hours up to years. Various techniques in uncertainty propagation, including aspects of space surveillance and space weather, are under development or have been explored, but need to be benchmarked and cross-compared to see how they suit the use cases. Issues are further exemplified when moving from 3 degrees of freedom to 6 degrees. How to transition from uncertainty assessment to operational products when it comes to re-entry predictions and orbital lifetimes?

Once the re-entry interface is reached, a strong driver in the risk associated to re-entry events is the first fragmentation of the object within the transition regime between free molecular and continuum aerothermodynamics. Early stage research on thermal and mechanical demise physics imply large differences in predicted secondary fragmentation and the heat seen by components, with a strong need for experiments and observations identified. Which multi-physics driven break-up processes produce predictions which can be verified on a macroscopic level to cause first fragmentation?

Registration is free but mandatory! You may register until Friday 27^th of November 2020 by sending an email to reentry_support@esa.int including: