In the active removal of space debris (hereafter referred to as debris), we examine the efficient order of removal when removing multiple debris pieces consecutively. Since debris differs in size and orbit, the collision risks also vary. Therefore, it is desirable to remove more debris with high collision risks during a single operation of a debris removal satellite. In this study, we modeled the optimization problem of debris removal order based on the Prize Collecting Traveling Salesman Problem (PCTSP), which is a type of combinatorial optimization problem. The PCTSP is a problem where, given the prizes obtained by visiting each city and the distances between cities, the goal is to find a route that maximizes the prizes collected by a salesman within the distance they can travel. In this study, cities were set as debris, prizes as debris risks, and distances between cities as the fuel required for orbital transitions between debris. We report the debris removal order determined using the Inver-Over Algorithm.
KOMURO et al. (Fri,) studied this question.