If you are interested in understanding the mechanism behind the GEO satellites entry and the risk these satellites pose for people and properties on the ground, check out our latest Open Access paper in Advances in Space Research.
Check it out at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2021.09.024
Paper summary
The paper studies the long-term behaviour of geosynchronous satellites under the influence of lunisolar perturbations. These perturbations generate a mechanism of eccentricity build-up that eventually leads to the spacecraft re-entry. As these orbits have high eccentricities, they perform several low-altitude passages in the atmosphere, making challenging to predict their actual re-entry. In addition, these spacecraft are massive and may not fully demise in the atmosphere, thus determining a certain risk for people on the ground. In this work, we first introduce a fast, analytic way to predict the re-entry conditions for these peculiar orbits, exploiting the concept of overshoot boundary. We also study the effect of multiple low-altitude passages and their risks. Finally, we simulate the destructive re-entry process to assess the casualty risk on the ground.
Acknowledgements
The work performed in this paper was funded by the ERC Project COMPASS.
