Colloquium: Adrian Ehrenberger (Space)

The increased number of spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit has led to an increase in the re-entries into Earth's atmosphere. This is expected to increase further as the commercialization of space continues to grow. The re-entry of spacecraft poses a risk to humans on the ground and in the air. To mitigate this risk, several strategies to increase the demisability of spacecraft have been proposed. Design for Demise (D4D) has been used to describe these strategies. This thesis took the RFA ONE kick stage as a case study and quantitively evaluated the effect of two opposing D4D strategies: increasing and decreasing the fragmentation during re-entry. The risk to humans on various classes of ships and aircraft has been evaluated. The results show that increasing the fragmentation of the kick-stage does not reduce the risk posed to humans. Minimizing the fragmentation of the kick-stage minimizes the collective risk posed to humans.

Supervisor: Marc Naeije