The ESA MASTER '99 space debris and meteoroid reference model

The second release of the European Meteoroid and Space Debris Terrestrial Reference Model MASTER issued by ESA is labelled as the MASTER'99 model(1). Compared to its predecessors, the MASTER'99 release offers a number of significant improvements with respect to the model's scope of application, its user friendliness and its documentation. MASTER '99 describes the man-made and natural particulate environment of the Earth and its incident flux on user-defined target orbits down to an impactor diameter of 1 micron. All relevant man-made and debris source terms are considered by the MASTER'99 model. Dedicated computer models are used to simulate the generation of objects due to all known debris sources and their orbit evolutions with time. This paper provides a brief survey of the MASTER model history before it provides a brief introduction to the model philosophy and the model background. The application modules of MASTER'99 namely its Graphical User Interface, the MASTER Standard Application (SA), and the MASTER Analyst Application (AA) are introduced. A brief survey of output features using exemplary results for results provided by the model is given before the outlook to already ongoing model enhancements is given.