ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

The ever increasing number of orbital debris has already led the space community to implement guidelines and requirements for “cleaner” and “safer” space operations in order to clear preserved orbits of space junks (Disposal manoeuvre to allow atmospheric re-entry in less than 25years). At the end of 2011 news of three uncontrolled atmospheric re-entries (UARS, ROSAT, Phobos-Grunt), impacting even European airspaces, has made the general public very concerned about the probability of having a piece of junk “from outer space falling in their garden”. The implementation of the European Space Code of Conduct and French Space Operation Act raised a requirement to prevent more than 1E-4 casualty risk from uncontrolled re-entries on flown ground population. Otherwise, the reentry shall be controlled by end of life disposal manoeuvre to target safe areas at 2E-5 risk. The recent game-changing to get compliance has been observed on new missions (SWOT, LOFT, METOP-SG...) constraining to switch from uncontrolled to controlled re-entry strategy. As involved in preliminary Design phase with its customer Thales Alenia Space , the ALTRAN company formed an internal working group on this topic: Orbital Debris Atmospheric Re-entry (ODAR) and focus on an innovative alternative Design for Demise ( D4D). The intention of this paper is to summarise current state of art on both techniques in order provide guidelines and recommendations to help in the trade-off about this issue : <ul> <li type=disc>Design for Demise effects on S/C and systems (as AOCS & GNC) <li type=disc>Controlled Re-entry effects on S/C and systems (as AOCS & GNC) <li type=disc>Trade-Off on S/C Critical Mass</ul>