Plasma signatures of small orbital debris in LEO

Since the beginning of the space age, the number of orbital debris has skyrocketed to levels which seriously threaten the current and future use of space. It is estimated that -36,500 objects greater than 10 cm and orders of magnitude more smaller objects are currently in orbit, created predominantly by collisional events. The smaller objects, with characteristic size less than ~1 cm, are extremely hard to detect and cannot be tracked with existing technology but, with typical velocities of ~10 km/s, can create significant damage upon impact. Furthermore, with the ongoing commercialization of space and constellations of thousands of satellites envisioned in the near future, the orbital debris problem is expected to become much worse and methods for detection, tracking, characterization and possibly removal are much needed.