Orbital Debris Generated Nonlinear Plasma Structures

The growing threat of orbital debris presents a significant risk to space missions, communication and sensing infrastructure, and national security. Orbital debris can range in size from tens of meters (defunct satellites), down to millimeter scale (paint chips). Even the smaller debris, because it is moving with orbital speed, carries enough kinetic energy that a collision with a satellite can be mission ending. Currently, debris larger than about 10 cm are routinely tracked and modeled well enough to be included in routine collision avoidance calculations, however, debris below about 5 cm cannot currently be tracked. Recently, it has been proposed that a charged orbital debris may interact with the background plasma and create coherent large amplitude density structures that may be more easily detected. The initial theories proposed an interaction based around ion acoustic waves in an idealized plasma, and a forced KdV equation was derived that showed that "precursor" solitons may be produced. In this work, we consider realistic space plasma conditions including the effects of self-consistent charging, ion Landau damping, sheared flow profiles around the debris, and the effects of a background magnetic field. These new plasma physics effects are critical in determining when and where solitons may be created by orbital debris and thus are critical first principles plasma physics problems that must be solved before a debris detection system based on debris/plasma interactions may be made operational.