Space Debris: Flux in a Two Dimensional Orbit

The debris circling the Earth has become an important environmental problem. In particular it creates nonnegligeable risk for spacecraft and satellites. This paper discusses a method to bound the rate of passage of objects through an arc segment in the plane of motion, given random initial conditions for the orbiting object. An advantage of the approach of this paper is that the initial conditions may be arbitrary and that moments beyond the rst may be computed in a similar manner.