A Novel CubeSat-Based Beambreak Array for Millimetric Orbital Debris Characterization

Overview

Orbital debris in the 0.1–10 cm size range are known to be a mission-ending risk for space assets. While larger debris are consistently tracked, ground-based radar systems offer only limited data for this size range at altitudes up to 3000 km, with no coverage at higher altitudes. Development of an in-situ characterization method will provide critical data on this debris class without the limitations associated with ground-based systems. This study proposes a laser beam-break array capable of detecting orbital debris as small as 0.1 cm that can be prototyped on a CubeSat platform. Preliminary simulations utilized stochastically generated debris objects to optimize a conservative system configuration to a beam spacing of 0.5 cm and a plane spacing of 1 cm within a 200 m3 sensor volume. The results of these simulations indicate an expected sensor accuracy for this configuration of ± 0.05 km/s for velocity characterization and ± 0.25 cm for diameter characterization. The optimized system parameters were then used to fabricate three test articles. Projectile testing validated sensor performance a low-velocity regime and identified critical hardware considerations for the final system. Based on current NASA models, while a technology demonstration mission flown on a 6U CubeSat will only detect 10–15 debris larger than 0.25 cm during a 5-year lifespan, this system can easily be scaled to detect upwards of 7000 objects larger than 0.1 cm yearly. A constellation of such systems will create an unprecedented dataset of in-situ debris flux measurements for Low Earth Orbit with the flexibility to expand measurements to Medium Earth and Geostationary orbits.

Competition history

• AJAS 2024 Category not listed

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Engineering projects
• AJAS Engineering projects
• Every AJAS 2024 project