Design Development of Debris Chaser Small Satellite with Robotic Manipulators for Debris Removal
Roshan Sah, Raunak Srivastava, Kaushik Das
Abstract
View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-2109.vid The rapid growth of space debris at low earth orbit (LEO) over the last several decades has caused threats to operational spacecraft in an orbit. To overcome this, mitigating measures need to be taken to avoid the risk of collision and to protect the LEO space environment. An Active Debris Removal (ADR) concept has been developed for this concern. One of the ADR methods is space robotics, which has been emerging continuously for over a decade. This paper presents the design of the small satellite with robotic manipulators which is intended to chase, capture and de-orbit the space debris. The small satellite is designed based on CubeSat standards, which uses commercially available products in the market. A couple of 3-DOF space manipulators are installed in the satellite system, which main function is to grasp the non-cooperative debris targets. A debris chaser satellite will be deployed in a designed parking orbit which will use the tracking cameras to track the nearby debris and plan a low thrust optimal rendezvous trajectory to the debris orbit. Once the chaser satellite reaches nearby, it will operate the manipulators to grasp and control the random angular momentum of debris objects by using its reaction wheels. After controlling, the system will be de-orbited and release the debris object towards 300 km altitude and the atmospheric drag would be enough to bring back to earth atmosphere and burn it. Upon that, the debris chaser will go in search of other objects. On-board components selection and orbital maneuver simulations along with performance characteristics are described in this paper. The use of DAG guidance law in the simulation process for execution of orbit transfer, rendezvous, and close proximity maneuver helps in providing smooth and optimal low thrust requirements in an operation. The results show that the designed debris chaser satellites are capable of reaching nearby to the PSLV debris with intrack separation of less than one kilometer in a controlled manner. After onward, docking, capturing, and de-orbiting operations can be done.