Are Interventions for Long-Term Orbital Risk Equally Important for Space Sustainability?

This project examines long-term orbital risk in Earth’s orbital environment, focusing on how different interventions influence space sustainability over extended time horizons. Earth’s orbital environment is approaching a critical threshold, with increasing space debris raising the probability of collisions that threaten satellites and essential services such as navigation, communication, and weather forecasting. If unmanaged, key orbital regions may become hazardous or unusable for decades. A key challenge is that existing interventions (e.g., debris mitigation, removal, and operational strategies) are difficult to compare. Their effects on long-term orbital risk are often fragmented, inconsistently measured, or not evaluated within a unified framework. Research questions: 1. Can current interventions meaningfully contribute to long-term space sustainability? 2. Are all interventions equally effective in reducing long-term orbital risk? 3. What are the limitations of existing approaches in ensuring sustainable use of orbital space? Current status: Early-stage conceptual development. Goal: * Co-develop a publishable research direction * Potentially evolve into a decision-support framework for prioritizing debris mitigation and removal strategies Collaboration: This project is open to researchers, graduate students, engineers, and independent experts interested in orbital mechanics, space sustainability, risk modeling, and policy. Contributions may include conceptual development, modeling, simulation, or interdisciplinary analysis. The work is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Reuse and extension are encouraged with appropriate attribution. If this aligns with your work, feel free to connect via OSF or reach out directly at joshi.parinay1@gmail.com