The number of satellites in low earth orbit is rapidly growing, and so is the risk of collision.  Satellite engineers monitor the positions of thousands of satellites in real time, and compute so-called collision probabilities when a close conjunction of two satellites becomes likely.  

The talk will discuss various aspects of this problem, suggests an alternative approach based on a statistical model for conjunctions, and compares it with established ideas.

The work is joint with Soumaya Elkantassi, Russell Carpenter and Matt Hejduk.