Uncertainty assessment for the breakup of satellites due to hypervelocity impacts

The breakup of a spacecraft or its components due to hypervelocity impact is a very chaotic event. Given the best of conditions, no two breakups will be exactly the same. This uncertainty in the physical process spills over into attempts to develop computer models to do breakup analysis and future debris environment forecasting. Because of this uncertainty, even the "best" breakup models for hypervelocity impacts of spacecraft components have a large level of uncertainty. Exactly what that uncertainty is remains an unknown. This paper analyzes how statistical information (if available) can be incorporated into debris environment projections.