Duration: 24 months
PERSEO proposes a novel approach to quantify the sustainability of future space activities . The core idea is to study the percolation dynamics of a complex network representing the space environment, its dynamics and the temporal evolution of the relationships among resident objects. Percolation in a complex network is the condition such that the consequences of an event occurring at one node diffuse, over time, to all other connected nodes. Percolation dynamics is how percolation and diffusion rate evolve in time. The more nodes are connected, and the more rapid diffusion is, the faster and wider the consequences of any collision or explosion spread. Hence, percolation and diffusion rates can be used as indicators of the global health of the environment. Also, PERSEO will show that percolation dynamics is directly related to the capacity of the environment to host space objects. PERSEO will derive a formal relationship between network connectivity, percolation dynamics, orbital carrying capacity and the risk sustained and induced by current and future space missions. This formal relationship descends from the fact that the carrying capacity of an environment is directly related to the equilibrium states of the equivalent network describing the dynamics of that environment. Furthermore, PERSEO will close the loop between space environment and Earth environmental and socio-economic impact to come to a holistic quantification of the sustainability of future space activities. Last but not least, PERSEO will use machine learning to produce a computationally fast forecast of the environment impact metrics so that long term predictions can become possible without running expensive simulations.
