In-Situ CubeSat Mission for Small Orbital Debris Detection, Tracking and Mitigation via Sensor Fusion and Laser Ablation

Overview

Small (1-10 cm) space debris in Low Earth Orbit is largely undetectable by current tracking systems, and can cause mission-ending damage to spacecraft. Due to low atmospheric drag, these fragments have orbital lifetimes of centuries, driving long-term cascading effects and potentially rendering entire orbital regions operationally inaccessible. This work designed, developed, and experimentally validated a 3U CubeSat (proof-of-concept) that integrates a solid-state LiDAR and global-shutter camera for the detection and tracking payload; pan-tilt pointing and a laser diode as a conceptual mitigation payload; and supporting CubeSat subsystems. The camera and LiDAR operate complementarily: the camera employs a trained object detection model to identify candidate debris and provide angular measurements, while the LiDAR performs active detection and precision ranging. Onboard sensor fusion refines observational data into a debris state vector that is transformed into classical orbital elements for risk assessment, enabling autonomous mitigation. Observational testing was conducted across varying debris sizes, speeds, distances, orientations, and types using a linear actuator to emulate relative motion, with 94.4% overall state vector construction accuracy. Informed by observational testing, Monte Carlo physics simulations scaled to 450,000 objects in the 750-1000 km band result in 292,328 unique detections, 255,479 tracked objects, and 129,864 mitigations across the simulated fleet. Additionally, the perigee sculpting continuous pulsed laser ablation strategy reduces debris lifetimes from 1090 to ~16 years for high-mass fragments (1 kg) and from 27 years to 0.76 years for low-mass objects (0.005 kg). These results demonstrate that the proposed CubeSat system architecture can effectively detect, track, and mitigate small orbital debris.