The Resident Space Objects Network: A Complex System Approach for Shaping Space Sustainability

Near-earth space continues to be the focus of critical services and capabilities provided to the society. With the steady increase of space traffic, the number of Resident Space Objects (RSOs) has recently boomed in the context of growing concern due to space debris. The need of a holistic and unified approach for addressing orbital collisions, assess the global in-orbit risk, and define sustainable practices for space traffic management has emerged as a major societal challenge. Here, we introduce and discuss a versatile framework rooted on the use of the complex network paradigm to introduce a novel risk index for space sustainability criteria. With an entirely data-driven, but flexible, formulation, we introduce the Resident Space Object Network (RSONet) by connecting RSOs that experience near-collisions events over a finite-time window. The structural collisional properties of RSOs are thus encoded into the RSONet and analysed with the tools of network science. We formulate a geometrical index highlighting the key role of specific RSOs in building up the risk of collisions with respect to the rest of the population. Practical applications based on Two-Line Elements and Conjunction Data Message databases are presented.