Investigation of three recent ATLAS V Centaur upper stage fragmentation events

Ravi, Pavithra; Frueh, Carolin; Schildknecht, Thomas (2021). Investigation of three recent ATLAS V Centaur upper stage fragmentation events. In: 8th European Conference on Space Debris. Darmstadt, Deutschland. 20. April 2021 - 23. April 2021.

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Three Centaur upper stage fragmentation events – 2009-047B, 2014-055B, 2018-079B – that took place in 2018and 2019 are studied. Ephemerides and Two-Line Ele-ments (TLEs) of the fragments, from three different datasources, are propagated to calculate the breakup epoch.Additionally, techniques developed by Tan and Reynolds[22] to obtain Gabbard plots, velocity & angular pertur-bations of the fragments, and event intensities, are ap-plied to the Centaur upper stage events. From the results,hypotheses regarding the causes of the events are postu-lated. The Centaur fragmentations stray from breakuppatterns exhibited by ’typical’ upper stage fragmenta-tions such as those pertaining to the historic explosiveDelta upper stage events. Only one of the three events,2018-079B, appears to have fragmented due to the com-bustion of leftover propellant. 2009-047B, on the otherhand, likely endured a structural failure – inferred fromclustered fragments and low fragment spreading speeds.A torus-shaped fragment distribution is observed for the2014-055B event, suggesting a collision with a smallpiece of debris may have taken place.

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