Geo debris environment: A model to forecast the next 100 years

The geostationary orbit is a unique natural resource that mankind will find useful for many generations to come. During a little over than 30 years, more than 600 objects have been placed into this region. Most of these objects were left in stable orbits to remain there for many thousands of years. At least three of these objects experienced fragmentation, whose fragments are too small to be detected from the earth, but are large enough to damage or destroy other satellites. The motion of these objects was analyzed to find out potential collision hazards including longitudinal clustering and sun-moon gravity effects. A breakup model was adopted partly reflecting laboratory experiments. With a simple object accumulation model the debris environment evolution was evaluated, under realistic debris mitigation scenarios to be adopted in the near future.