Experimental Investigation of Orbital Debris Soliton Generation*

Half a century of human exploration and exploitation of the near-earth space environment has resulted in an exponential growth of orbital debris, which now threatens assured continuous access to space.  Serious malfunction or disabling of critical on-orbit satellite systems or sensors can result from a collision with a debris fragment traveling at hypervelocity speeds.  Hence, collision avoidance with orbital debris is essential for survival of satellites.  Optical tracking of the small sub-centimeter size debris is difficult at best, but according to NASA, a collision with even a millimeter-size debris at orbital speed is mission ending.   Therefore, innovative detection techniques are needed for accurate tracking of the debris distribution and timely implementation of collision avoidance maneuvers to protect satellites.

 

Theoretical investigations [1,2] have shown that a charged object moving with supersonic speed through a plasma generates nonlinear fore-wake excitations called solitons that could be detected in advance of the arrival of the object.  The calculations indicate that the solitons are either pinned to the debris or radiate from it and the plasma density irregularities they create may be detectable.   A laboratory experiment in dusty plasma demonstrated the generation and radiation of such solitons [3]. 

 

A laboratory investigation in scaled space plasma conditions has been initiated in the NRL Space Physics Simulation Chamber to test the theoretical predictions for both electrostatic and electromagnetic solitons and to lay the groundwork for determining what is necessary for a space demonstration experiment.  We present recent demonstrating the controlled generation of supersonic plasma flows generation, ranging from subsonic through supersonic and exceeding typical orbital velocities, the interaction of model debris objects with the flowing plasma, and the subsequent plasma response.

 

1. Sen et al., Adv. Space Res. 56, 429 (2015).

2  Sen et al., Phys. Plasmas, 30, 012301 (2023)

3. Jaiswal et al., Phys Rev E, 93, 041201 (2016).