Impact on mission design due to collision avoidance operations based on TLE or CSM information

highlights•Approach for collision avoidance activities and its impact in avoidance manoeuvres.•TLE and CSM accuracy.•Suggested Accepted Collision probability Level for different orbital regimes and catalogue capabilities.•Comparison with real avoidance approaches.

Collision avoidance manoeuvres are considered for mission design and fuel budget allocation, and may have a relevant impact in particular orbital regimes. Current operations for collision avoidance are based on Two-Line Elements (TLE) orbital data or the Conjunction Summary Message (CSM) data. This paper presents the most suitable approach for collision avoidance for several mission types when operations are based on TLE or CSM data, with a detailed analysis of the impact of the orbital accuracy of catalogue data and warning time-to-event on mission design in terms of fuel budget for collision avoidance activities and operational constraints imposed by the avoidance manoeuvres.