<h2>AAS 95-348</h2><h2>The Contribution of Past Fragmentation Events to the Uncatalogued Orbital Debris Population</h2><h4>C. Pardini, A. Cordelli, A. Rossi, L. Anselmo and P. Farinella, CNUCE/CNR, Pisa, Italy</h4><h2> Abstract </h2>In order to understand the origin of the artificial debris population in the 1 mm - 10 cm size range, we carried out a massive effort to estimate the contribution of past fragmentations events.

Our research involved the development of a dedicated software code, CLDSIM, able to simulate the 117 catalogued fragmentation events in earth orbit occurred from 1961 to 1993, and to propagate the resulting debris clouds to a reference epoch (January 1, 1994).

More than 10 millions of orbital debris with a mass larger than 1 mg were generated and about 6.8 millions resulted still in orbit at the reference epoch.   The resulting data were used to investigate the properties of the uncatalogued population.
<br><br>