{"id":6474,"date":"2015-10-28T09:40:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T09:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=6474"},"modified":"2015-10-28T09:40:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T09:40:14","slug":"developing-anti-space-debris-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/developing-anti-space-debris-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Developing anti- space debris technology"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Debris<\/a>
Debris in low orbit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ESA is teaming up with Europe\u2019s satellite makers and equipment suppliers to evaluate candidate technologies to prevent the generation of space debris in key orbits by future space missions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis marks the first time that Europe\u2019s three large satellite prime contractors \u2013 Airbus Defence & Space, Thales Alenia Space and OHB \u2013 have worked together in this way on a single contract,\u201d explains Tiago Soares of ESA\u2019s CleanSat programme.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey will be gathering at ESA\u2019s ESTEC technical centre along with subsystem suppliers and ESA experts to design the most promising technology building blocks to ensure Europe\u2019s future low-orbit satellite designs are fully compliant with space debris regulations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

These three companies are like Europe\u2019s Formula 1 teams for space: designing uniquely challenging machines, relying on networks of smaller high-tech suppliers \u2013 and normally fiercely competitive. But space debris is a big enough problem to bring them together.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"CleanSat\"<\/a>
CleanSat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some region of space are more useful \u2013 and therefore more valuable \u2013 than others. Geostationary orbit, providing stable points relative to Earth\u2019s surface for telecommunications and meteorology, has been safeguarded for many years through international anti-debris regulations.<\/span><\/p>\n

These ensure that geostationary \u2018slots\u2019 are vacated when a satellite reaches its end of life, preventing derelict satellites from interfering with live missions or becoming a source of space debris.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now regulations have been extended to the heavily trafficked low-orbit region, less than 2000 km above our planet\u2019s surface.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the key requirements:\u00a0 that all future missions can fully \u2018passivate\u2019 themselves to remove any chance of an orbital explosion; that they remove themselves from this orbital region within 25 years of their end of life; and that any atmospheric reentry has a less than one in 10 000 chance of harming anyone on the ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"CleanSat<\/a>
CleanSat participants<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMeeting these requirements carries heavy implications for satellite platform designs,\u201d adds Tiago. \u201cSo with CleanSat the aim is to do it on a coordinated industry-wide basis, to identify key building blocks that can be developed jointly, to foster common supply chains and reduce costs and boost general European competitiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe began by asking the three prime contractors to tell us their priority areas, then put out a general announcement of opportunity for the suppliers to propose technologies based on them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom these proposals we have come to a shortlist of 28 concepts that will now be studied over the course of 2016 in our Concurrent Design Facility, using networked software tools to work together in real time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]Geostationary orbit, providing stable points relative to Earth\u2019s surface for telecommunications and meteorology, has been safeguarded for many years through international anti-debris regulations.[\/pullquote]<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cThe primes will be joined by equipment companies as well as ESA\u2019s technical experts and representatives of ESA\u2019s Directorates of Earth Observation and Telecommunication and Integrated Applications \u2013 as the leading Agency users of low orbits.\u201cThe most promising concepts will go on to full development contracts over the two to three years that follow, so that they should be available for future ESA and European missions by the decade\u2019s end.\u201dThe building blocks under study include propellant tanks and other equipment specially engineered to burn up in the atmosphere, new high-thrust engines or solid rocket motors dedicated to deorbiting, unfolding sails that serve to increase atmospheric drag and an unfurled tether that interacts with Earth\u2019s magnetic field to function as an electromagnetic brake.Other candidates enable satellites to operate more efficiently throughout their lifetime, leaving extra fuel that can be dedicated to deorbiting. Examples include methods of replenishing fuel tank pressure and new wireless temperature sensors to reduce the need for cabling and therefore mission mass.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESA is teaming up with Europe\u2019s satellite makers and equipment suppliers to evaluate candidate technologies to prevent the generation of space debris in key orbits by future space missions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",95,54,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",305,172,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",96,54,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Space_Debris_medium.jpg",150,85,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}