Speakers
Description
The Space Rider System (SRS) is an affordable, independent, re-usable, uncrewed, end-to-end European transportation system for routine access to and return from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Initially conceived to be mainly a commercial exploitation medium dedicated to host PLs and to perform in orbit experiments (with the capability to return them back to Earth), its concept can be extended to serve as a flexible In-Orbit Services (IOS) and Close-Proximity Operations (CPO) platform.
As stated above, commercial exploitation is one of the primary objectives of the SR program. To better assess commercial program potential, market and use-case applications analyses were performed in order to defining platform policies and guidelines for PL experiments but also highlighted a strong interest and demand for In-Orbit Services platforms in the following years.
The study reports SR baseline architecture with the aim to explore the current IOS/CPO capabilities and to identify potential evolutions and relative impacts at system-level. The SRS is natively designed to perform IOD/IOV of emerging technologies, and this also applies to the ones that, especially in Europe, are being developed for the IOS and CPO domains (e.g. inspection, debris management, in-space manufacturing, re-fuelling, robotics, etc).
Among these emerges the potential use as a means of implementing a lot of use-cases present in the clean space domain that the ESA intends to strongly pursue, with the aim of guaranteeing the sustainability of the space sector. Regarding this last aspect, the SRS program is open to receive proposal from PLs or technologies developing innovative solutions or pursuing TRL raising in this domain exploiting the unique characteristics of the SR Platform.
This study will describe the foreseen requirements, interfaces, procedures, and technologies to be adopted and the relative system architecture evolutions needed to support the tasks related to IOS/CPO activities. Part of these features and capabilities are currently present in the baseline SRS design to support its Maiden Flights needs (perform orbital manoeuvres and maintain specific attitudes for the release and potential retrieval of small satellites from/to its cargo-bay), others will be implemented in the near future or will be designed on-demand basis to support more complex tasks.
The study will also explore the complementary needs to fully support advanced IOS/CPO capabilities, making SR a fully cooperative and prepared platform. In this field the study will report the evaluated solutions which to eventually equip the vehicle (and their impact) to support relative navigation, closing and capture phases (docking / berthing operations). Many of these activities also requires a robotic arm to perform complex manipulating tasks, and in this domain, activities are ongoing to host a set of robotic arms demonstrators. The long-term vision can potentially include a SR configuration capable to perform a full set of IOS capabilities to support different mission profiles (e.g. ADR kit placement, inspection, etc.).
Finally, it is important to highlight that the SRS concept implement, by design, a first example of circular economy in space with the aim to minimize waste (only AOM will be destroyed at the end of the mission, if not potentially reused in orbit for other purposes) and maximize resource efficiency (the RM is designed to be re-flight up-to six times). Future evolutions, as described above, will finally realize the enabling capabilities to explore reusable and recyclable satellites concepts and space infrastructures.
