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Séminaire d’économie de Bordeaux

Akhil Rao

(Middlebury College)

« An integrated debris environment assessment model framework »

Abstract: Launch behaviors are a key determinant of the orbital environment. Physical and economic forces such as fragmentations and changing launch costs, or policies like post-mission disposal (PMD) compliance requirements, will alter the relative attractiveness of different orbits and lead operators to adjust their launch behaviors. However, the determinants of launch behavior are understudied, and integrating models of launch behavior with models of the debris environment remains an open challenge. We present a statistical framework for integrating predictive, theoretically-grounded models of launch behavior with evolutionary models of the low-Earth orbit (LEO) environment. We implement this framework using data on satellite launches, the orbital environment, launch vehicle prices, sectoral revenues, and government budgets over 2006-2019. The data are combined with a multi-shell and multi-species Particle-in-a-Box model of the debris environment and a two-stage budgeting model of commercial, civil government, and military decisions to allocate new launches across orbital shells. We demonstrate the framework’s capabilities in three counterfactual scenarios: an unexpected fragmentation event in a highly-used region, a decrease in the cost of accessing lower parts of LEO, and increasing PMD compliance in a region with high collision risk. Substitution across orbits based on their evolving characteristics and the behavior of other operators induces notable changes in the debris environment relative to mechanistic models of the debris environment using repeated launch patterns.

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