Space Debris Capture - About New Methods of Tethered Space Net Opening by Tubular Booms

Nowadays, space debris is one of the main subjects of discussion regarding satellites in Earth's orbit. Right now, there are about 26,000 orbiting satellites and only few of these satellites are operational. Recently, the Polish space sector has been strongly growing and delivering instruments working in space. The first part of this paper describes the several space instruments designed in the Space Research Centre Polish Academy of Science (SRC PAS). Instruments such as SWI, RPPWI, LPPWI, Ebox or Pre-boxes have been created for a mission to Jupiter named “JUICE”. After fulfilling their scientific mission, these instruments can increase the amount of debris in space. This is one of the reasons for taking up the topic of space debris reduction and the use of technical solutions used in this mission for the proposed solution presented later.

The second part of this paper describes the new methods related to space debris. The activities can be related to the space debris removal programmes. The paper describes two methods developed by Polish scientists used for removal of space debris. One of them is the new capture method and mechanism designed for it. The special mechanism is based on tubular boom application for opening the net, to capture the space debris. The main parts of the mechanism are mechanisms which have been used in the JUICE space mission. The paper describes the main idea for these new methods, and for the design part prepared the strength confirmation by structural analysis. The main function of the mechanism has been verified by simulations and tests performed in laboratories.