MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling
The rapid increase in the number of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and reducing launch costs is likely to threaten the orbital environment. Understanding how this growth will affect the orbital debris population is paramount to designing effective policy, regulation and mitigation to protect the l...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2025-05-01
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| Series: | SoftwareX |
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| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352711025000299 |
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| author | Indigo Brownhall Miles Lifson Stephen Hall Charles Constant Giovanni Lavezzi Marek Ziebart Richard Linares Santosh Bhattarai |
| author_facet | Indigo Brownhall Miles Lifson Stephen Hall Charles Constant Giovanni Lavezzi Marek Ziebart Richard Linares Santosh Bhattarai |
| author_sort | Indigo Brownhall |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The rapid increase in the number of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and reducing launch costs is likely to threaten the orbital environment. Understanding how this growth will affect the orbital debris population is paramount to designing effective policy, regulation and mitigation to protect the long term space sustainability of LEO. This will require interdisciplinary research of potential impacts, demanding contributions from social scientists, economists, astronomers, and alike. However, the complexity of astrodynamics and technical ability to build evolutionary space environment models often poses a significant barrier to interdisciplinary engagement, impeding critical research in this area. Previous models and tools have been developed, but are often not open-source nor accessible. MIT Orbital Capacity Assessment Tools (MOCAT) was developed to provide an open-source evolutionary space environment modeling capability to the broader space and policy communities, featuring both a computationally intensive but higher fidelity full-scale Monte Carlo model (MOCAT-MC) and a lower fidelity but significantly faster source sink evolutionary modeling framework, (MOCAT-SSEM). Here we continue this journey by presenting a Python version of the source sink tool, MOCAT-pySSEM with an accompanying web application (featuring cloud-hosted computation) to support future interdisciplinary research. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-c2995ba105474441ba29f72cbaa598d9 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2352-7110 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-05-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | SoftwareX |
| spelling | doaj-art-c2995ba105474441ba29f72cbaa598d92025-08-20T03:05:21ZengElsevierSoftwareX2352-71102025-05-013010206210.1016/j.softx.2025.102062MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modelingIndigo Brownhall0Miles Lifson1Stephen Hall2Charles Constant3Giovanni Lavezzi4Marek Ziebart5Richard Linares6Santosh Bhattarai7Space Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, University College London, United Kingdom; Corresponding author.The Aerospace Corporation, United StatesSpace Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, University College London, United Kingdom; The Aerospace Corporation, United States; Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United StatesSpace Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, University College London, United KingdomDepartment of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United StatesSpace Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, University College London, United KingdomDepartment of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United StatesSpace Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, University College London, United KingdomThe rapid increase in the number of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and reducing launch costs is likely to threaten the orbital environment. Understanding how this growth will affect the orbital debris population is paramount to designing effective policy, regulation and mitigation to protect the long term space sustainability of LEO. This will require interdisciplinary research of potential impacts, demanding contributions from social scientists, economists, astronomers, and alike. However, the complexity of astrodynamics and technical ability to build evolutionary space environment models often poses a significant barrier to interdisciplinary engagement, impeding critical research in this area. Previous models and tools have been developed, but are often not open-source nor accessible. MIT Orbital Capacity Assessment Tools (MOCAT) was developed to provide an open-source evolutionary space environment modeling capability to the broader space and policy communities, featuring both a computationally intensive but higher fidelity full-scale Monte Carlo model (MOCAT-MC) and a lower fidelity but significantly faster source sink evolutionary modeling framework, (MOCAT-SSEM). Here we continue this journey by presenting a Python version of the source sink tool, MOCAT-pySSEM with an accompanying web application (featuring cloud-hosted computation) to support future interdisciplinary research.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352711025000299Space debrisEvolutionary modelSpace sustainabilityAstrodynamicsOrbital carrying capacity |
| spellingShingle | Indigo Brownhall Miles Lifson Stephen Hall Charles Constant Giovanni Lavezzi Marek Ziebart Richard Linares Santosh Bhattarai MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling SoftwareX Space debris Evolutionary model Space sustainability Astrodynamics Orbital carrying capacity |
| title | MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling |
| title_full | MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling |
| title_fullStr | MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling |
| title_full_unstemmed | MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling |
| title_short | MOCAT-pySSEM: An open-source Python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling |
| title_sort | mocat pyssem an open source python library and user interface for orbital debris and source sink environmental modeling |
| topic | Space debris Evolutionary model Space sustainability Astrodynamics Orbital carrying capacity |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352711025000299 |
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