Speaker
Ms
Luisa Innocenti
(ESA-LAU-SF)
Description
Studies at NASA and ESA indicate that the only means of sustaining the environment at a safe level for space operations will be by active removal of currently existing mass in orbit. Targets selected for active removal should have a high mass (as these targets have the largest environmental impact in case of collision), a high collision probability (i.e. they should be in densely populated regions), and should be in high altitudes (where the orbital lifetime of the resulting fragments is long). A Phase-A study to bring down a large EAS-owned piece of space debris will be held in 2014.
Clean Space – Space Debris Remediation
The Clean Space initiative was presented as part of the “Advancing ESA Technology Programmes” in view of the Ministerial Conference in 2012. Its aim is to devote increasing attention to the environmental impact of ESA’s activities, including its own operations as well as operations performed by European industry in the frame of ESA programmes. Clean Space Branch 4 specifically aims to develop key technologies for Space Debris Remediation and Active Debris Removal (ADR).
Mission Outline
The specific requirements of an ADR mission call for the development and validation of several technologies in the different mission phases:
• Rendezvous with uncooperative target: sensor suite, telecommunications, operations concept
• Attitude matching: forced motion GNC for acquiring a stable relative position with respect to the target, and perform the final approach
• Capture: capture mechanism, capture operations
• De-orbit manoeuvres: control of the composite (after capture) during orbital manoeuvres and controlled re-entry.
This presentation will be focused on the high-performance computing needs for the close approach and the mating and capture mission arcs. These parts of the mission need complete avionics solution able to cope with very demanding autonomous closed loop controlled systems: the problem of pose estimation when the debris is tumbling is one of the most demanding ones in terms of avionics (computing power, and real-time software processing). In this context, features of the target should be acquired and analysed such as size, relative position, behaviour (movement and speed) and shape
