The recent upgrade and future perspectives of the ESABASE/Debris tool Original Research Article

ESABASE is a software tool which provides more than 10 applications for space-specific analyses. This paper focuses on the ESABASE/Debris application, which has been upgraded in the course of a recent ESA/ESTEC study. A brief description of the structure and the capabilities of the program is given. The main extension of ESABASE/Debris is the implementation of the recently upgraded MASTER 2001 Standard application, and of the Divine-Staubach meteoroid model. The upgraded ESABASE/Debris tool and its new flux models have been applied to the historic LDEF mission. The model results are compared with real impact data. Additional results of flux analyses of targets in low Earth orbit and in the geostationary orbit provide an impression of the comprehensive capabilities of ESABASE/Debris. A brief description of planned future developments concludes the paper.