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Today\'s world of space\'s primary concern is the uncontrolled growth of space debris and its probability of collision with spacecraft, particularly in the low earth orbit (LEO) regions. This paper is aimed to design an optimized micro-propulsion system, Cold Gas Thruster, to de-orbit the PSLV debris from 668km to 250 km height after capturing proc...
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... The mission of de-orbiting using solid propellant thruster is to bring the satellite from initial low Earth Orbit of 600 km to 200 km [7] [8]. This is achieved by first transferring the satellite in the transfer orbit whose apogee is 600 km and perigee is 180 km. ...
An increase in satellite application has skyrocketed the number of satellites, especially in the low earth orbit (LEO). The major concern today is that these satellites become debris after the end of life, negatively affecting the space environment. As per the International Guidelines of the European Space Agency, it is mandatory to deorbit the satellite within 25 years of its end of life. This paper is aimed to design the solid chemical propellant thruster to deorbit the StudSat II from its original orbit to the lower orbit. StudSat II carries the heritage of StudSat I, successfully launched on 12th July 2010 AD, and is the first Pico Satellite in India by the undergraduate students of seven engineering colleges. This paper explains how a solid monopropellant thruster could be used to deorbit the satellite after the end of life with the least difficulty compared to other active and passive methods of deorbiting. The deorbiting mechanism consists of a solid propellant, Convergent Divergent nozzle, ignition system, and electronic actuators. The components of the thruster were designed in the CATIA V5, and the combustion studies and flow analysis were done in ANSYS. The concept of Hohmann transfer was used to deorbit the satellite, and STK was used to simulate it.
Over a couple of decades, space junk has increased rapidly, which has caused significant threats to the LEO operation satellites. An Active Debris Removal $(ADR)$ concept continuously evolves for space junk removal. One of the ADR methods is Space Robotics, whose function is to chase, capture and de-orbit the space junk. This paper presents the development of an on-ground space robotics facility in the TCS Research for on-orbit servicing $(OOS)$ like refueling and debris capture experiments. A Hardware in Loop Simulation (HILS) system will be used for integrated system development, testing, and demonstration of on-orbit docking mechanisms. The HiLS test facility of TCS Research Lab will use two URs in which one UR is attached to the RG2 gripper, and the other is attached to a force-torque sensor and with a scaled mock-up model. The first UR5 will be mounted on a 7-axis linear rail and contain the docking probe. First, UR5 with a suitable gripper has to interface its control boxes. The grasping algorithm was run through the ROS interface line to demonstrate and validate the on-orbit operations. The manipulator will be mounted with LIDAR and a camera to visualize the mock-up model, find the target model's pose and rotational velocity estimation, and a gripper that will move relative to the target model. The other manipulator has the UR10 control, providing rotational and random motion to the mockup, enabling a dynamic simulator fed by force-torque data. The dynamic simulator is fed up with the orbit propagator, which will provide the orbiting environment to the target model. For the simulation of the docking and grasping of the target model, a linear rail of a 6m setup is still in the procurement process. Once reaching proximity, the grasping algorithm will be launched to capture the target model after reading the random motion of the mock-up model.
