CNES operational practices for space debris risk limitation and protection

The question of debris becomes a more and more important problem for the space activity. In the future, the limitation of debris production will be obtained, not only through the design of the spacecrafts, but also through operational practices; until now, there are no "rules of the road" in space but operational practices are discussed at international level and give birth to recommendations: some of these practices are already studied and implemented at CNES for the control of satellites. One important source of debris production in space comes from the potential collisions between satellites or between a satellite and a debris. This paper presents the main theoretical studies on the subject, the description of the operations already performed on satellites controlled by CNES and the main results.