Risks of Secondary Space Debris Generation from Net Capturing in Active Space Debris Removal Missions

Mitigation strategies which eliminate existing space debris, such as with Active Space Debris Removal (ASDR) missions, are now more important than ever regarding the ever-growing space debris population problem. One of the considered ASDR approaches uses a net as a capturing strategy. The benefits of such strategy are to allow for a large...

Guidance, Navigation and Control System Design of Envisat Active Debris Removal

Space debris is becoming one of the major risks to be suffered by operating and future space missions. Recent studies show that the number of potentially hazardous uncontrolled orbital bodies is growing with time, increasing the probability of impact with operational satellites. To counteract this problem, several studies are being suggested to...

Determination of the attitude state of space debris objects based on Satellite Laser Ranging, using Envisat as a test case

The attitude state of the passive Envisat satellite (ESA) has been estimated before using various techniques like Satellite Laser Ranging, radar and using light-curves. This research focusses on the use of Satellite Laser Ranging. Due to the relatively large (meter scale) offset between the center-of-mass of the satellite and the reflector where...

Evolving Systems Approach to the Attitude Control of a Large-Space-Debris Removal Spacecraft

Space debris has become a major issue for the space industry over the last couple of years. The increasing number of uncontrolled objects in space increases the chance of collision with a spacecraft. The unexpected loss of contact with ENVISAT, the European Space Agency’s largest environmental spacecraft, added one more piece of debris to the...

Tether Dynamics Analysis and Guidance & Control Design for Active Space Debris Removal

Recent years have seen a steep increase in research being performed towards active space debris removal: space debris has proven to be a very real threat to operational spacecraft, and studies indicate that the frequency of collisions will only increase if nothing is done to remove large pieces of debris. In particular, ESA has done studies...

Analysis of the Rendezvous Phase of e.deorbit: Guidance, Communication and Illumination

The aim of this thesis is to investigate a debris-remediation technique where a chaser performs a rendezvous with the debris, establishes a rigid-link connection, and actively de-orbits the debris. Remediation of the space environment becomes an increasing urgency, since the continuously growing space debris population in low-Earth orbit...

Multi-View ICP for 3D reconstruction of unknown space debris

With a growing threat from space debris, it has become more important for space agencies to have a means of reducing the probability of escalating the dangers posed by it. For this purpose, servicer satellites need to be built. These satellites need to be able to interfere with “dead” satellites and deorbit defunct satellites. In order to be...