Formation and dynamics of an artificial ring of dust for active orbital debris removal

Recently we suggested a dust-based active debris removal technique to selectively remove small untrackable debris that occupies a very large volume around the Earth. For designing a working system an accurate knowledge of the dynamics of the released dust in orbit is necessary. In this paper we numerically examine the dynamics of non-interacting spherical tungsten dust grains of diameter between 30-60 microns released in a polar low-Earth orbit. We analyze different perturbations due to nonuniform gravity, solar radiation pressure, solar cycles as well as solar and lunar gravity, and dust charging effects, etc., and determine a set of forces adequate to describe the dynamics over the life of the dust in orbit (∼12–15 years). With the resulting force model we analyze the orbits of many dust grains to determine the formation and geometry of the ring. We qualitatively examine the effects of the calculated geometry and dynamics of the dust cloud on the efficiency of the Active Debris Removal scheme.