Abstract:

In response to the increasingly frequent commercial suborbital launch activities in the future, a covariance propagation algorithm is used to rapidly predict the debris drop points of suborbital disintegration accidents to reduce the operational risk of suborbital sudden disintegration accidents to civil airliners and to improve the emergency response capability of the air traffic control surveillance system to hazardous situations. The algorithm models the stochastic process of debris drop points prediction as a Gauss-Markov process around a linearized nominal trajectory. At the same time, the probability ellipsoid of the Gauss-Markov process at a certain confidence level is constructed by the probability density function to quantify the positions of the debris drop points in the vicinity of the nominal trajectory. On this basis, the ballistic coefficients affecting the debris propagation trajectory are derived and calculated concerning the standard disintegration model of spacecraft. Simulation results show that the method can effectively improve the prediction accuracy of the debris hazard area.

Key words: suborbital disintegration accident, covariance propagation algorithm, standard disintegration model, ballistic coefficient, hazardous area prediction