A Flight Experiment of Electrodynamic Tether Using HTV toward the Realization of Debris Removal

Abstract

The active removal of existing space debris is the one of the most proactive strategies to suppress space debris growth. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is investigating a cost-effective space debris removal system that employs the highly efficient electrodynamic tether (EDT) technology as its orbital transfer system. As the first step toward the realization of a debris removal system, a flight experiment of EDT using the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV, or “Kounotori”) is planned. This experiment is called the Kounotori Integrated Tether Experiment (KITE). The purpose of the KITE mission is to establish and demonstrate EDT technology and to obtain some EDT characteristics, such as flexible tether dynamics, and electron emission and its collection in space plasma. Precise numerical simulations were performed to analyze some aspects of mission by modeling the tether as a lumped mass. This method can account for its flexibility by segmenting the tether into point masses connected by segments comprising a spring and viscous damper. In the KITE mission, some interesting operations such as tether libration suppression using thrusters on HTV are planned. This tether control uses a thruster, which enables various operations such as collision avoidance maneuvers, that is required for debris removal satellites in the future. In this paper, the results of the numerical simulations of the KITE mission and their potential applications are presented.