The MASTER-99 space debris and meteoroid environment model Original Research Article

MASTER-99 is a space debris and meteoroid environment model produced by TU Braunschweig (D), eta_max space (D), and DERA (UK) under an ESA contract. The model allows to compute particulate impact fluxes on any terrestrial target orbit up to geostationary altitudes. Flux contributions can be discriminated with respect to debris source types (catalog objects, explosion and collision fragments, NaK droplets, solid rocket motor dust and slag, impact ejecta, and surface degradation products), meteoroid source types (Divine-Staubach populations, and annual stream events), and with respect to origin and impact direction of each flux contributing particulate. Impact fluxes of meteoroids and debris down to 1 μm sizes can be determined for spherical targets, for tumbling plates, or for oriented, planar surfaces which are controlled according to standard attitude steering laws. MASTER-99 is distributed by ESA/ESOC on a CD ROM which includes user documentation, and the necessary data files, executables, and GUI driven installation scripts for the most common operating systems and computer platforms. MASTER-99 is delivered together with PROOF-99, a program for radar and optical observation forecasting. Based on the MASTER-99 population larger than 1 mm, it predicts debris detections from ground-based or space-based sensors (radars or telescopes) of user-defined system performances.