Spacecraft Collision Probability

Earth is surrounded by an orbiting junkyard. Keenly aware that it is getting crowded up there, researchers have tried to finesse various models for the short-term and long-term management of the relative trajectories of a variety of debris, but aerospace practitioner Chan carefully explains why such models do not, in essence, work. He describes how spacecraft are most likely to encounter each other, the characteristics of the encounter region, the particulars of Rician distribution and the isotropic problem, analytic expressions as they should be done for short-term and long-term encounters, the probability of collisions with the International Space Station, maneuvers that may reduce risk of collisions, "formation flying," maximum probabilities of collisions, close encounters with multiple satellites, instantaneous probabilities of collision, spherical error probability computation, and available computer programs to study collisions and build better models that can be used in managing space junk. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)