Adaptive Just-in-time Collision Avoidance via Targeted Dust Cloud Deployments from Orbital Platforms

Space debris poses an increasing risk to the operation of satellites and spacecraft, especially in low Earth orbit. Collisions, whether between debris and operational craft or between debris objects themselves, threaten to damage critical space systems and further increase the debris population. While traditional remediation techniques focus on removing large, high-risk objects from orbit, Just-in-time Collision Avoidance (JCA) strategies aim to dynamically lower overall risk by taking small, last-minute actions—slightly nudging the orbit of a debris object, for example—to prevent predicted collisions. We propose to develop a new JCA architecture based on deployment of dust clouds from orbital platforms in order to provide small braking forces on targeted debris objects, providing a responsive, always-ready method to prevent high-consequence collisions.

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