Nov 6 – 9, 2018
DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
Europe/Amsterdam timezone

ReDSHIFT software tool for the design and computation of mission end-of-life disposal

Nov 8, 2018, 3:00 PM
30m
Single 107

Single 107

Building 135
Oral presentation at the conference 10: Clean Space and Environment Modelling Clean Space and Environment Modelling #1

Speaker

Federico Letterio (Deimos Space S.L.U.)

Description

One of the deliverables of the ReDSHIFT H2020 project will be a software tool available to the scientific community and the public via a web-based interface. The ReDSHIFT software is thought as a tool for spacecraft operators, space agencies and research institution to design the end-of-life of any Earth-based mission and to study the interaction with the space debris environment.
In this talk the general description of the tool will be given together with a detailed description of the modules currently in the more advanced development state: the disposal module, via impulsive manoeuvres (manoeuvre module) and solar and drag sails (solar dynamics module), the spacecraft population interaction module and the re-entry module.
Given the initial orbit of the spacecraft and the spacecraft characteristics in terms of its cross area and mass, the optimal options for end-of-life disposal are given and compared; namely end-of-life disposal via one or a sequence of manoeuvres, end-of-life disposal through the use of a solar/drag sail or end-of-life through a hybrid sail + manoeuvre approach. This module is based on a study of the natural orbit evolution in the low to medium and geostationary regions that was performed to identify long-term stable orbits or resonance conditions to be used as graveyard or re-entry trajectories. The optimal manoeuvre to reach such re-entry or graveyard conditions is calculated. Moreover, the re-entry can be enhanced through a sail. In this case, different strategies for sail attitude control were previously compared and selected.
The optimal disposal by this module is passed to the space environment module so that the effect of this disposal on the space debris environment is calculated. This is done based on precomputed long-term simulations of the whole space debris environment, under different scenarios, to be used for the computation of the collision risk for the spacecraft in the disposal phase.
In the case the disposal trajectory is a re-entry one, the condition of the orbit at 120 km are used to verify the demisability of the spacecraft. This is done, by default, using some predetermined spacecraft configuration but the external user can also load a preferred configuration.
All the modules are interfaced and linked, in a carefully triggered processing chain, through the openSF simulation framework properly configured and customised to adhere to the needs of the ReDSHIFT SW tool.
It is the aim of the ReDSHIFT tool to contribute in a proactive way to the mitigation of space debris problem via passive end-of-life mitigation.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the Horizon 2020 Program of the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020-PROTEC-2015) under REA grant agreement n. [687500]- ReDSHIFT.

Primary author

Federico Letterio (Deimos Space S.L.U.)

Co-authors

Alessandro Rossi (IFAC-CNR) Camilla Colombo (Politecnico di Milano) Ms Despoina Skoulidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) Ms Elisa Maria Alessi (IFAC-CNR) Ms Giulia Schettino (IFAC-CNR) Gonzalo Vicario de Miguel (DEIMOS SPACE) Mr Ian Holbrough (Belstead Research Ltd) Mr Ioannis Gkolias (Politecnico di Milano) James Beck (Belstead Research Ltd) Mr Kleomenis Tsiganis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) Mr Narcís Miguel i Baños (Politecnico di Milano) Mr Volker Schaus (TU Braunschweig, Institute of Space Systems)

Presentation materials

Peer reviewing

Paper