Space sustainability is one of the primary concern for future ability of all humanity tocontinue the space activities for socio-economics benefits. Years of unregulated orbitexploitation, technology demonstrations and testing have led to an exponential growthof space debris, resulting in an increased risk for satellites. Moreover, it may create acascade effect, known as the Kessler syndrome. To secure future space exploration, it isof primary importance to understand and characterise the space debris phenomenon anddevelop a sustainable mission that implements end-of-life solutions. With this premises,this thesis develops the preliminary design of a CubeSat mission to characterise thedebris environment in low Earth orbit. Moreover, the mission aims at testing a newconcept of in-orbit autonomous collision avoidance system, that could reduce both thecosts and the risk of a collision avoidance manoeuvre. At the end of the mission, thespacecraft would implement a de-orbit strategy exploiting atmosphere drag, reducingthe orbit decay time. Due to the high uncertainties in the atmospheric models the reen-try evolution and decay time is usually difficult to predict. To face the issues generatedby the uncertain reentry models, this thesis investigates the feasibility of implementinga payload to measure and collect data regarding atmosphere temperature and pressureduring the re-entry. To trace the loads effects on the spacecraft, accelerations and struc-tures temperature and strains are registered. The objective is to validate and improvethe re-entry models via post-processing of the collected data, until the break up of thesatellite below 100 km altitude. This work poses the basis for future CubeSat scientificmissions for Low Earth Orbit characterisation. A wide CubeSat programme could helpthe scientific community to work with high fidelity in-situ measurements to elaboratemore accurate models. Thanks to small dimensions and low budget, CubeSat are aneffective and low-cost means to improve our orbit environment knowledge, and increaseawareness for better and sustainable use of space. This thesis and the mission proposalwas part of the COMPASS project: Control for orbit manoeuvring by surfing throughorbit perturbations (Grant agreement No 679086). This project is European ResearchCouncil (ERC) funded project under the European Unions Horizon 2020 research.
La sostenibilit`a spaziale `e una delle preoccupazioni principali per la futura capacit`adi tutta l’umanit`a di proseguire le attivit`a spaziali con un vantaggio socio-economico.Anni di sfruttamento non regolamentato dello spazio, a seguito di dimostrazioni tecno-logiche e test, hanno condotto ad una crescita esponenziale dei detriti spaziali, causandoun aumento di rischio per i satelliti. In questo modo, si potrebbe presentare il ris-chio dell’innesco di un fenomeno a cascata, conosciuto come sindrome di Kessler. Persalvaguardare la futura esplorazione spaziale, `e di importanza strategica comprenderee analizzare il fenomeno dei detriti spaziali, e sviluppare missioni sostenibili che im-plementino strategie di fine vita. In questo contesto, questa tesi presenta lo studiopreliminare di una missione CubeSat volta a definire l’ambiente dei detriti nell’orbitaterrestre bassa. Inoltre, la missione mira a esaminare una nuova concezione del sistemaautonomo di prevenzione della collisione in orbita, che possa ridurre sia i costi sia il ris-chio di una collisione. Al termine della missione, il satellite implementer`a una strategiadi rientro, che sfrutti l’attrito generato dall’atmosfera, riducendo il tempo di decadi-mento dell’orbita. A causa delle elevate incertezze nei modelli dell’atmosfera, la fasedi rientro di oggetti spaziali `e spesso molto difficile da predire. Per affrontare i prob-lemi generati da dall’incertezza dei modelli di rientro, questa tesi indaga la possibilit`a diimplementare uno strumento per misurare e raccogliere dati durante la fase di rientro,principalmente la temperatura e la pressione atmosferica. Per tenere traccia degli effettidei carichi aerodinamici sul satellite, le accelerazioni, la temperatura e le deformazionidella struttura vengono misurati e immagazzinati a bordo, fino alla distruzione del satel-lite ad una quota inferiore ai 100 km. Lo scopo `e convalidare e migliorare i modelli dirientro utilizzando un’elaborazione a posteriori dei dati raccolti. Questo lavoro pone lebasi per un futuro utilizzo scientifico dei CubeSat nella definizione dell’ambiente pre-sente in orbita terrestre bassa. Un programma che preveda un utilizzo distribuito diCubeSats, potrebbe fornire alla comunit`a scientifica misurazioni in tempo reale di altaqualit`a, volte ad elaborare modelli pi`u accurati. Grazie alle piccole dimensioni e al bud-get ridotto rispetto alle missioni classiche, i Cubesats rappresentano un mezzo efficaceper migliorare la conoscenza dell’ambiente orbitale e accrescere la consapevolezza per unuso migliore e pi`u sostenibile dello spazio.Questa tesi fa parte del progetto COMPASS: controllo di manovre sfruttando le pertur-bazioni orbitali (sovvenzione No 679086). Questo progetto `e finanziato dall’ EuropeanResearch Council (ERC) attraverso l’European Unions Horizon 2020.
CubeSat mission design for in-orbit environment characterisation
Brenna, Marco Paolo
2019/2020
Abstract
Space sustainability is one of the primary concern for future ability of all humanity tocontinue the space activities for socio-economics benefits. Years of unregulated orbitexploitation, technology demonstrations and testing have led to an exponential growthof space debris, resulting in an increased risk for satellites. Moreover, it may create acascade effect, known as the Kessler syndrome. To secure future space exploration, it isof primary importance to understand and characterise the space debris phenomenon anddevelop a sustainable mission that implements end-of-life solutions. With this premises,this thesis develops the preliminary design of a CubeSat mission to characterise thedebris environment in low Earth orbit. Moreover, the mission aims at testing a newconcept of in-orbit autonomous collision avoidance system, that could reduce both thecosts and the risk of a collision avoidance manoeuvre. At the end of the mission, thespacecraft would implement a de-orbit strategy exploiting atmosphere drag, reducingthe orbit decay time. Due to the high uncertainties in the atmospheric models the reen-try evolution and decay time is usually difficult to predict. To face the issues generatedby the uncertain reentry models, this thesis investigates the feasibility of implementinga payload to measure and collect data regarding atmosphere temperature and pressureduring the re-entry. To trace the loads effects on the spacecraft, accelerations and struc-tures temperature and strains are registered. The objective is to validate and improvethe re-entry models via post-processing of the collected data, until the break up of thesatellite below 100 km altitude. This work poses the basis for future CubeSat scientificmissions for Low Earth Orbit characterisation. A wide CubeSat programme could helpthe scientific community to work with high fidelity in-situ measurements to elaboratemore accurate models. Thanks to small dimensions and low budget, CubeSat are aneffective and low-cost means to improve our orbit environment knowledge, and increaseawareness for better and sustainable use of space. This thesis and the mission proposalwas part of the COMPASS project: Control for orbit manoeuvring by surfing throughorbit perturbations (Grant agreement No 679086). This project is European ResearchCouncil (ERC) funded project under the European Unions Horizon 2020 research.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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https://hdl.handle.net/10589/170340