Riley Fitzgerald
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
ECF 2023 Quadchart Fitzgerald.pdf
Dr. Fitzgerald will characterize a new, just in time orbital debris mitigation strategy. This method will deploy space based assets that would release a dust cloud into a targeted orbit to induce drag on a targeted object to alter its trajectory and avoid collision. The project will analyze the relationships between dust cloud dispersion, free-flight time, deployment methodology, and remediation effectiveness and use them to design an optimal mission architecture.