Operational Feedback on Four Years of Collision Risk Avoidance at Launch in Europe

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Operational Feedback on Four Years of Collision Risk Avoidance at Launch in Europe

Handschuh, D. A. / Wang, C. / Vidal, B.

The space community is nowadays aware of the space debris problems. In particular, the collision avoidance is a subject that is more and more studied. Moreover, the specific problematic of collision avoidance during the launch phase of a spacecraft should be studied carefully because there are specific constraints to consider during this period. Since 2010, The Technical Regulation (TR) associated to the French Space Operations Act (FSOA) requires an analysis of the collision probability between all objects launched from Kourou and every inhabited object in space. The main goal of this requirement is to protect the orbital manpower from any debris or body recently injected in orbit that could not have been catalogued and integrated in classical avoidance maneuver preparation. CNES has developed a specific tool to compute such a collision risk analysis at launch. This tool is used since 2010 for every launch from Kourou and is able to indicate to the operator the period of the launch window to be forbidden to avoid any collision. This paper introduces this tool and an operational feedback of its utilization since 2010.