Conveners
Active Debris removal and Space Servicing Vehicle: ADR & SSV: SYSTEM
- Robin Biesbroek (ESA)
Active Debris removal and Space Servicing Vehicle: ADR & SSV: SYSTEM
- Robin Biesbroek (ESA)
Active Debris removal and Space Servicing Vehicle: GNC
- Jesus Gil (ESA/ESTEC)
Active Debris removal and Space Servicing Vehicle: Robotics
- Gianfranco Visentin (ESA)
Airbus has been developing a mission and chaser concept for capturing and deorbiting the defunct Envisat satellite with different partners in the frame of ESA studies (e.Deorbit Phases A and B1). In the last e.Deorbit study called ‘Consolidation Phase’ which aims at implementing findings from the intermediate SRR, Airbus along with their partners CBK, MDA, SENER and GMV was pursuing the...
The EC FP7 RemoveDebris mission aims to be one of the world’s first Active Debris Removal (ADR) missions to demonstrate key technologies in-orbit in a cost-e_ective ambitious manner, including: net capture, harpoon capture, vision-based navigation, dragsail de-orbitation. The mission will utilise two CubeSats as artificial debris targets to demonstrate the technologies. In early 2018, the main...
Since the beginning of the space era, a significant amount of debris has progressively been generated in space. In addition, the rise of large low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations mean in the near future, space populations could significantly increase in key orbits. Founded in 2013, ASTROSCALE’s mission is to secure long-term spaceflight safety, and to become a key provider of reliable and...
In Orbit Services is a rising potential market, both in GEO and in LEO orbits, creating baseline technologies for active debris removal (ADR) missions. Life extension, repair and inspection, refueling and transport are a few of the ideas that have been mentioned. The business feasibility is reflected in the new Satellite Servicing Vehicle Concept within ESA‘s Clean Space Initiative.
Effective...
The announcement of mega-constellations reinforces the debris issue and the need for operators to address the problem of removal of failed spacecraft from orbit. Future satellites shall be compliant with Space Debris Mitigation requirements. In any case, failure before end-of-life could occur, endangering the capability for the satellites to respect those requirements, with increasing...
ESA has performed feasibility analysis on a proposed baseline GNC system during a CDF study to design a Space Servicing Vehicle. The main objective of the GNC design is to be able to serve multiple missions with minor adaptations. This is achieved by defining a common rendezvous and capture/docking strategy and sensor suite. Based on ATV experience and previous studies a common framework for...
cosine Measurement Systems BV is developing visual and infrared optical systems ranging from 0.4 to 14 µm suitable for relative navigation, on-orbit servicing and debris removal. We report on the development status including ongoing and planned In-Orbit Demonstrations of the technology, and tailored developments of three vision-based sensor systems for the I3DS suite: a stereo camera system in...
The RVS® rendezvous & docking sensor technology has successfully served as operative LIDAR approach sensor on eigteen re-supply vehicle missions to the International Space Station (ISS). Drawing from the experience with this robust and reliable technology, the next generation time-of-flight scanning LIDAR sensors, RVS3000, has been developed and qualified by Jena-Optronik with the support of...
Extending life or repairing damaged on-orbit assets is not only a very attractive economic option for satellite operators as it could potentially increase margins for commercial services or increasing delivered value of scientific missions, but it would also help reducing the number of debris objects in space.
These types of servicing missions pose technical challenges never faced until now....
In the e.Deorbit Consolidation Phase CBK PAN is responsible for development and validation of a cartesian force/torque compliant control of the robotic arm. This controller will be used during the clamping operation. The goal of the compliant control is to ensure that during the motion of the arm the forces and torques (especially acting on the gripper) will be kept within a certain limit and...
Nowadays, robotic spacecraft on orbit servicing or so called “Space Tug” capabilities are limited. This is mainly due to the relative poor availability of exteroceptive sensors for space navigation and the poor on-board processing resources preventing the design of ambitious autonomous systems.
Goal of the I3DS project is to fulfil this technology gap and realise a suite of perception...
An important application is seen in the collection and avoidance of space debris, up to active de-orbiting of LEO satellites which have failed or reached the end of their lifetime.
For active de-orbiting of unusable satellites, safe and reliable capture technologies have to be designed and developed. Clamping technologies are one of the building blocks of ADR missions, and an interesting...
In the course of the e.Deorbit Consolidation Phase study led by Airbus Defence & Space, SENER is responsible for the development of the clamping mechanism aimed to clamp and lock on the launch adapter ring of ENVISAT – the inactive ESA satellite. Afterwards, the mechanism has to sustain the main loads induced during the de-orbit phase.
One of the main goals of this phase was to select and...
