Speaker
Description
In recent years, there has been a considerable increase in interest in the sustainable development of the space sector. Public awareness of the space debris problem within the context of future space logistics has significantly driven the development of solutions to address this critical issue.
SENER Aeroespacial is committed to playing a key role in addressing this challenge. The company is not only applying sustainable design principles in the selection of materials and processes but also enhancing the capabilities of its technological products that could be instrumental in the cleaning and prevention of space debris.
SIROM is a modular, plug-and-play robotic interface designed for the transfer of data, power, and fluids. It presents a latching mechanism that ensures a rigid connection. This mechanism's ability to mechanically connect devices presents a significant opportunity to prevent the increase of space debris by equipping clients with passive interfaces (I/Fs). Thereby, after its operational lifetime, by means of diverse operations deorbiting could be possible (e.g. using robotic arms equipped with SIROM to capture prepared defunct satellites and then deorbiting them together safely as part of a larger debris system; or, using small autonomous deorbit kits equipped with SIROM, able to dock to a client to slowly alter their orbits until they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up)
In the last few years, the participation in project of the In Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM) domain have motivated developments to enable docking and refuelling operations.
Recently, SENER has participated in SPoC-1 project phase B1, making considerable efforts to prove SIROM applicability for docking operations. Among the activities performed an air-bearing test campaign at ORBIT facility was conducted to study different conditions.
The test was designed to assess the interaction between two floating vehicles during the mechanical capture process, and, subsequently, correlate it with a rigid body contact model in ADAMS to assess the veracity of the computational representations.
Along these test campaign different capture conditions are tested (relative positions and velocities), used to characterize SIROM capture range in 2D microgravity conditions.
Learnings both on the SIROM performance and experiment’s setup definition will be presented.
