Effect of the orbital debris environment on the high-energy van allen proton belt.
Orbital debris in the near-Earth environment has reached a number density sufficient for a significant collisional interaction with some of the long-lived high-energy protons in the radiation belt. As a result of a continuing buildup of a shell of man-made debris, the lifetimes of high-energy protons whose trajectories remain below 1500 kilometers will decrease to the point where in the next decades we can expect a noticeable reduction in their fluxes.
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