Introducing the ESA drama tool

The introduction of debris mitigation measures, and subsequent mitigation standards, is recognised as a vital step to preserve the near Earth orbital region for future use. To this end, ESA and national space agencies in Europe have drafted a European Code of Conduct for Space Debris Mitigation. To enable ESA space programmes to assess their compliance with the recommendations in this Code of Conduct, a new software model has been conceived - the Debris Risk Assessment and Mitigation Analysis (DRAMA) tool. This tool has been developed by a European team under ESA contract. DRAMA is composed of five individual software applications collected under a common graphical user interface. The individual applications have been designed and developed to address different aspects of debris mitigation. They enable an assessment of collision avoidance manoeuvres, collision flux and damage statistics, disposal manoeuvres at end-of-life, re-entry survival and re-entry risk analysis. Each of these tools provides the user of DRAMA with numerical and graphical results suitable for determining the debris risk posed to their mission and assessing the effectiveness of their end-of-life strategy. In this way, the tool can provide a basic compliant / non-compliant answer, in respect of the European Code of Conduct recommendations, for the operational and disposal phases of a mission.