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MIT Orbital Capacity Assesment Tool

What is MOCAT?

Risk-based capacity, or carrying-capacity, looks at the quantity and configuration of objects that can be placed subject to various constraints. ARCLab is developing the MIT Orbital Capacity Assessment Tool (MOCAT). MOCAT is a suite of MATLAB models to assess the evolution of Low Earth Orbit over long periods of time under different assumptions. There are currently two main portions of MOCAT, MOCAT Monte Carlo (MOCAT-MC), which uses super-computing to evaluate environmental trends in higher fidelity, and MOCAT Source Sink Evolutionary Model (MOCAT-SSEM), which uses a lower fidelity modeling approach capable of running on a personal computer in seconds to minutes.

Both tools exist with a basic level of functionality. MOCAT-MC runs are regularly being performed on MIT’s supercomputer to explore a variety of potential future scenarios and optimize the codebase. Runs show good agreement with outputs of the European Space Agency’s DELTA tool.

Contributors

  • Richard Linares - Faculty Advisor
  • Di Wu - Lab Member
  • Daniel Jang - Lab Member

Papers

  1. Jang, Daniel & D'Ambrosio, Andrea & Lifson, Miles & Pasiecznik, Celina & Linares, Richard. (2022). Stability of the LEO Environment as a Dynamical System.
  2. Jang, Daniel & Gusmini, Davide & Siew, Peng Mun & D'Ambrosio, Andrea & Servadio, Simone & Machuca, Pablo & Linares, Richard. (2023). Monte Carlo Methods to Model the Evolution of the Low Earth Orbit Population.
  3. Hugh G. Lewis. (2020). Understanding long-term orbital debris population dynamics,