Robotic Refueling Mission-3—an overview

Breon, Susan; Boyle, R. F.; Francom, Matthew; DeLee, C.; Francis, John J.; Mustafi, Shuvo; Barfknecht, Peter; McGuire, John R.; Krenn, Angela; Zimmerli, Gregory A.; Hauser, Daniel M.

doi:10.1088/1757-899x/755/1/012002

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“… Kassemi et al 47 Comparison of CFD and experimental data from 3 different datasets of self-pressurization HP Ground, ISS, Space Shuttle Hydrogen, PnP, Freon-113 Only experimental controlled and known boundary conditions allow a good agreement with experiments and CFD of two-phase systems. Breon et al 48 Storage and transfer of a cryogenic fuel on orbit ZBO TO HP/AP TVS Ground, ISS Nitrogen, Argon, Methane 4 months Zero Boil-Off methane storage by a cryocooler. Problem during on-orbit venting expelled all methane prior to transfer demonstration.…”

Section: Application Perspectives and Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cryogenic propellant management in space: open challenges and perspectives

Simonini,

Dreyer,

Urbano

et al. 2024

npj Microgravity

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This paper presents open challenges and perspectives of propellant management for crewed deep space exploration. The most promising propellants are liquid hydrogen and liquid methane, together with liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. These fluids remain liquid only at cryogenic conditions, that is, at temperatures lower than 120 K. To extend the duration of space exploration missions, or even to enable them, the storage and refueling from a cryogenic on-orbit depot is necessary. We review reference missions, architectures, and technology demonstrators and explain the main operations that are considered as enablers for cryogenic storage and transfer. We summarize the state of the art for each of them, showing that many gaps in physical knowledge still need to be filled. This paper is based on recommendations originally proposed in a White Paper for ESA’s SciSpacE strategy.

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Section: Application Perspectives and Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A quite unique technological demonstrator for the storage and transfer of liquid methane was developed by ref. 48 : the Robotic Refueling Mission 3 (RRM3). This mission extends RRM1 and RRM2, which demonstrated satellite refueling operations in a platform installed outside the ISS.…”

Section: Application Perspectives and Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cryogenic propellant management in space: open challenges and perspectives

Simonini,

Dreyer,

Urbano

et al. 2024

npj Microgravity

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“…[45] (a) piezo bimorph bender; a kind of piezo-electric material used as both sensors and as actuators; [46,47] (b) utilization of piezo-electric sensor and actuators utilized on the free-floating flexible space robot simulator in figure 8b [48] simulating hardware such as the Robotic Refueling Mission-3. [49] Subfigure b is taken from [47] a publication that is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.…”

Section: Frequency Responses Of Step and Periodic Functions [24]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Flattening the Curve of Flexible Space Robotics

Sands¹

2022

Preprint

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Infrastructure monitoring, inspection, repair, and replacement in space is crucial for continued usage and safety, yet it is expensive, time-consuming, and technical very challenging. New robotics technologies and artificial intelligence algorithms are potentially novel approaches that may alleviate such demanding operations using existing or novel sensing technologies. Space structures must necessarily be very light weight due to high costs of placing robots in space. Several methods are proposed and compared to control highly flexible space robotics, where a key challenge is the presence of flexible resonant modes at frequencies so low as to reside inside typical feedback controller bandwidths. Such conditions imply the very action of sending control signals to the ultra-light weight robotics will cause structural resonance. Implementations of incrementally increasing order are offered, achieving over ninety percent performance improvement in trajectory tracking errors, while improvement using unshaped methods merely achieve twenty-four percent improvement in direct comparison (where the only modification is the proposed control methodology). Based on superior performance, single-sinusoidal trajectory shaping is recommended with a corollary benefit of preparing future research into applying deterministic artificial intelligence whose current instantiation relies on single-sinusoidal, autonomous trajectory generation.

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“…During the Robotic Refueling Mission #3 (RRM3), evidence from both temperature sensors and Radio Frequency Mass Gauging results suggested that when the cryocooler was turned off, the ullage moved to the cryocooler connection point. [4,5] The RRM3 tank contained a sponge propellant management device, controlling approximately 80% of the tank. When the cryocooler was on, the ullage bubble appeared to be contained above the sponge in the area generally allocated for it.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of heat transfer from a local heat source at cryogenic temperatures

Johnson

Balasubramaniam

Grotenrath

2022

IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng.

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Understanding the dispersion of heat around a cryogenic fluid tank, specifically the interaction between the cryogenic fluid and the tank wall is critical in the analysis of long duration cryogen storage in microgravity. The heat transfer interaction between a cryogenic storage tank and heat sources from external spacecraft structures is also one of the many factors that determine how much heat enters a tank. Recent flight experiments with two-phase fluids have indicated that local concentrations of heat input (also known as “hot spots”) can cause unwanted affects including local boiling. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models can provide a detailed assessment of the heat transfer occurring across a cryogenic storage system. However, CFD modeling takes time to construct and run. A simpler approach that can act as initial guidance for later CFD modeling analyzes external “hot spots” as point or finite heat sources. A radial, finite element network or a local direct solution can effectively estimate the heat spread across a cryogenic storage tank by calculating the temperature and heat load as a function of distance from the heat source. This calculation accounts for the convective heat transfer between the cryogenic fluid and storage tank surface. Similar approaches can be used to determine the effectiveness of cooling from a cryocooler as a finite, local heat sink. This approach allows for quick approximations of the thermal map across a cryogenic tank as well as sensitivity analysis under a wide range of design parameters including gravitational fields as implied through natural convection coefficients.

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Robotic Refueling Mission-3—an overview

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

Cryogenic propellant management in space: open challenges and perspectives

Cryogenic propellant management in space: open challenges and perspectives

Flattening the Curve of Flexible Space Robotics

Analysis of heat transfer from a local heat source at cryogenic temperatures

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