Tethered-Tugs for Active Debris Removal: Microgravity Experimental Validation of Dynamics and Control

Abstract

The SatLeash experiment, flown on-board Novespace rqs Zero-G aircraft in the 65th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign in October/November 2016, as a part of ESA Education Fly Your Thesis! Programme, investigated the dynamics and control of tow-tethers, for space transportation. Towing objects in space through a tether has become a common concept for many missions such as active debris removal, satellite servicing and even asteroids retrieval. The team exploited a multibody dynamics simulator to describe tethered-satellitesystems dynamics and synthetize their control. The inflight experiment focused on validating the adopted models and verifying the implemented control laws. The paper briefly introduces firstly the models set up together with the adopted control law, gives the simulations rq rationale, describes the flight experiment design and integration, to secondly focus the attention on the experimental campaign data and data postprocessing. The validation process is, then, explained and preliminary results are discussed.

Paolo Lunghi

Assistant Professor of Aerospace Systems

Aiming for autonomous Guidance, Navigation, and Control for spacecraft.