Future improvements in conjunction assessment and collision avoidance using a combined laser tracking/nudging network

We report about the findings of our conceptual study LARAMOTIONS (SSA P3-SST-XV) funded by the European Space Agency in which simulations on laser station networks for tracking and momentum transfer have been carried out in order to analyse the possible improvements in conjunction assessment and collision avoidance in the low Earth orbit (LEO). In this paper the software architecture for the simulations is outlined as well as the results for different network geometries considering the number of stations, their geographical distribution and local weather conditions regarding their impact on the achievable orbit accuracy. We compare on-demand tracking in response to conjunction alerts from radar-based orbital data with the operation of permanent laser tracking yielding a “laser catalogue” of debris’ orbital data being independent from radar measurements. Moreover, we explore space debris nudging with photon pressure from ground-based highpower lasers in terms of a reduction of the collision rate in LEO.