A Comprehensive Ranking Framework for Active Debris Removal Missions Candidates

Active debris removal missions are necessary to guarantee the safe and sustainable use of space resources and environment in the future.The development of priority lists describing the severity of each object in orbit to the debris environment and its evolution have been widely addressed in literature to support the candidate selection for removal missions.In this work, a comprehensive ranking framework is developed, extending the assessment of the objects' criticality also to the economical orbital resource value and the mission operations requirements based on the target state and characteristics.The developed ranking framework is aimed to support the design multiple target active debris removal missions, and to preliminary assess the reliability requirements needed for the disposal options.The scheme is applied to the low Earth orbit population and the results are discussed.