Wednesday 20 May 2026 at 4:45 pm, as part of the “Matematica in Azione: Sustainability around the Earth” seminar cycle, Elisa Maria Alessi (IMATI-CNR) will give the following talk
Title: How dynamical systems theory can help in the design of passive mitigation strategies for the space debris problem
Abstract: Most of the artificial bodies orbiting the Earth are non-functional spacecraft, rocket bodies and fragments. As operational satellites are key assets for life on Earth, the international community is facing the space debris problem by means of different measures, from observations to regulations, from spacecraft design to advanced mathematics. The ultimate goal is to make sustainable the space exploitation. At the moment, one of the most effective mitigation measures is the so-called end-of-life disposal, i.e., the satellite, once the operations are concluded, cannot be left in its orbit, but must be disposed towards an orbit that will not cause any risk to the operational satellites. Natural gravitational and non-gravitational perturbations can be considered to reduce the cost of this maneuver. In this talk, I will introduce the space debris problem and I will focus on the coupled effect of Earth's oblateness and solar radiation pressure. The perturbation in the long term can be written as a series of resonant terms, that produce a variation in the orbit of the satellite. By isolating one term at a time, we can obtain an integrable model. The corresponding phase space can be used to define suitable initial conditions and area-to-mass rati to de-orbit the spacecraft towards the Earth's atmosphere, by increasing naturally the orbital eccentricity. Numerical simulations based on a full dynamical model have confirmed the existence of these trajectories, that have been called "de-orbiting corridors".
Information to attend
The seminar will be held in Room U9-09 (U9 Building | Viale dell’Innovazione 10, Milano) and will also be available online by this link.
For more information, visit the website