Modelling future launch traffic and the associated risk to new missions

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Wilson, Callum and Vasile, Massimiliano and Feng, Jinglang and McNally, Keiran and Maric, Nina and Horstmann, Andre (2026) Modelling future launch traffic and the associated risk to new missions. Advances in Space Research, 77 (11). pp. 10947-10971. ISSN 0273-1177 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2025.07.055)

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Abstract

Due to the recent increase in the rate of launches to space, there is a renewed interest in modelling the evolution of the space environment. These models aim to predict how objects, including active spacecraft and debris, will be distributed in the environment in future. This work focusses on two components of an overall environment model: the launch traffic model and the risk model. Many space environment models that require an estimate of launch traffic will either use no launches as a baseline or repeat historical data. Recent shifts in launch traffic have shown that this approach is unrealistic and does not account for potential further changes in launch traffic. Models of risk in the space environment aim to quantify the risk posed to a mission by other objects in the environment and the additional risk a new mission generates to other objects in the environment as a result of potential collisions. This is difficult to calculate over the lifetime of a mission due to the number of encounters and the uncertainty in how active satellites are distributed in the environment. Our proposed approach to modelling launch traffic is a parametric model that can simulate various future launch scenarios. This model calculates the total number of objects launched per year using an exponential-logistic curve to capture the sharp increase in launch traffic. To determine the location and physical characteristics of launched objects, the model fits probability distributions to data from previous launches. These distributions can vary over time to simulate other changes in launch trends aside from the number of objects. The launch traffic model can be used along with other debris environment modelling tools to simulate the evolution of the space environment and accordingly to calculate the risk of collision for new missions. Our proposed model of risk estimates the likelihood and severity separately, where risk likelihood is a measure of the probability of collision and severity quantifies the consequences of a collision. The likelihood estimate comes from the intersection of distributions of orbital parameters, which is suitably fast to calculate over the lifetime of a mission. The model of severity in the environment uses a simple model to approximate the effects of a collision without needing to propagate all fragments. In addition, we model the severity of collisions for the mission of interest based on the predicted effect of a collision on the spacecraft. This work used different launch scenarios to generate varying evolutions of the space environment. Results are shown from applying the risk model to example missions across these scenarios.

ORCID iDs

Wilson, Callum ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3736-1355, Vasile, Massimiliano ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8302-6465, Feng, Jinglang ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0376-886X, McNally, Keiran, Maric, Nina and Horstmann, Andre;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)