Robust Capture and Deorbit of Rocket Body Debris Using Controllable Dry Adhesion

TARGET GROUP: SPACE DEBRIS IN LOW EARTH ORBIT

OBJECTIVES

·        To remove large orbital debris in a safe, robust, and cost-effective manner is a long-standing challenge, having serious implications for LEO satellite safety and access to space.

·        To investigate the use of controllable dry adhesives (CDAs), also known as gecko-inspired adhesives, as an alternative approach to R/B docking and deorbiting.

SUMMARY

The accumulation of debris in low-Earth orbit (LEO) is a well-documented and growing hazard to future space operations. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking over 13,000 large debris objects of size class >10 cm. However, there are estimates of over 500,000 debris objects in LEO sized >1 cm. Given the average LEO collision velocity of around 10 km/s, these objects are difficult or impossible to shield against. Indeed, the heavily shielded US modules of the International Space Station (ISS) are only rated to withstand ∼1.4 cm diameter debris impacts. Thus, each of these objects, most of which are too small to track, is large enough to disable the broad majority of colliding spacecraft. In the past 5 years alone, NASA has executed or assisted in over 100 collision avoidance maneuvers of the ISS and robotic spacecraft to prevent such impacts. Large-scale hypervelocity collisions are rare but devastating events. The most significant accidental collision to date occurred in 2009 between the functioning Iridium 33 and the deactivated Cosmos 2251 satellite, generating over 2,200 pieces of large catalogued debris and many more smaller fragments. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) Investigation of a new approach using controllable dry adhesives (CDAs) to dock to and stabilize tumbling R/B debris, and (2) an exploration of possible roles for CDAs in thruster attachment and during deorbit burns.

REFERENCE

https://stanfordasl.github.io/wp-content/papercite-data/pdf/Bylard.MacPherson.Hockman.ea.AeroConf17.pdf