A deployable mechanism concept for the collection of small-to-medium-size space debris

Abstract

Current efforts in active debris removal strategies and mission planning focus on removing the largest, most massive debris. It can be argued, however, that small untrackable debris, specifically those smaller than 5 cm in size, also pose a serious threat. In this work, we propose and analyze a mission to sweep the most crowded Low Earth Orbit with a large cupola device to remove small-tomedium-size debris. The cupola consists of a deployable mechanism expanding more than 25 times its storage size to extend a membrane covering its surface. The membrane is sufficiently stiff to capture most small debris and to slow down the medium-size objects, thus accelerating their fall. An overview of the design of a belt-driven rigid-link mechanism proposed to support the collecting cupola surface is presented, based on our previous work. Because of its large size, the cupola will be subject to significant aerodynamic drag; thus, orbit maintenance analysis is carried out using the DTM-2013 atmospheric density model and it predicts feasible requirements. While in operation, the device will also be subject to numerous hyper-velocity impacts which may significantly perturb its orientation from the desired attitude for debris collection. Thus, another important feature of the proposed debris removal device is a distributed array of flywheels mounted on the cupola for reorienting and stabilizing its attitude during the mission. Analysis using a stochastic modeling framework for hyper-velocity impacts demonstrates that three-axes attitude stabilization is achievable with the flywheels array. MASTER-2009 software is employed to provide relevant data for all debris related estimates, including the debris fluxes for the baseline mission design and for assessment of its expected performance. Space debris removal is a high priority for ensuring sustainability of space and continual launch and operation of man-made space assets. This manuscript presents the first analysis of a small-to-medium size debris removal mission, albeit finding it to not be economically viable at the present time.

Orbital Debris Threat for Space Sustainability and Way Forward (Review Article)

“…After the selection of the target, the next most crucial objective is how to catch and remove that object away from the populated region. Many methods and systems have been proposed by researchers for removing space debris [51], [63]- [67]. Some of the most famous removal concepts are based on directed energy, tethers (momentum exchange or electrodynamics), aerodynamic drag augmentation, solar sails, auxiliary propulsion units, retarding surfaces and on-orbit capture (Johnson, Nicholas L. Klinkrad, 2009).…”

Synthesis and Design of a One Degree-of-Freedom Planar Deployable Mechanism With a Large Expansion Ratio

“…Due to the simplications and approximations made upstream from the optimisation, the resulting design should be carefuly simulated to ensure geometric coherence. As shown in Fig.15, the optimisation problem described above was applied for a space application in which the deployable mechanism has to initially fit in a shuttle of 4.5m diameter [25]. The upper right triangle of the plot is a domain where the retracted triangle cannot fit the given space.…”

Energy Analysis of a Space-Energy Driven Laser-Ablation Debris Removal System

“…Since the proposal of a space-energy driven laser-ablation removal scheme in 1989, scholars have designed a variety of removal schemes for different removal requirements [14,15], debris orbit [16,17], shape [18,19] and attitude characteristics [20,21]. Removal processes and effects under different removal scenarios through different orbit change models [22] and relative position relationships have been fully studied [23].…”