Effective Computational Approach for Prediction and Estimation of Space Object Breakup Dispersion during Uncontrolled Reentry

This paper provides an effective approach for the prediction and estimation of space debris due to a vehicle breakup during uncontrolled reentry. For an advanced analysis of the time evolution of space debris dispersion, new efficient computational approaches are proposed. A time evolution of the dispersion of space pieces from a breakup event to the ground impact time is represented in terms of covariance ellipsoids, and in this paper, two covariance propagation methods are introduced. First, a derivative-free statistical linear regression method using the unscented transformation is utilized for performing a covariance propagation. Second, a novel Gaussian moment-matching method is proposed to compute the estimation of the covariance of a debris dispersion by using a Gauss-Hermite cubature-based numerical integration approach. Compared to a linearized covariance propagation method such as the Lyapunov covariance equation, the newly proposed Gauss-Hermite cubature-based covariance computation approach could provide high flexibilities in terms of effectively representing an initial debris dispersion and also precisely computing the time evolution of the covariance matrices by utilizing a larger set of sigma points representing debris components. In addition, we also carry out a parametric study in order to analyze the effects on the accuracy of the covariance propagation due to modeling uncertainties. The effectiveness of the newly proposed statistical linear regression method and the Gauss-Hermite computational approach is demonstrated by carrying out various simulations.