Space debris poses a significant threat for the future of the rapidly growing space industry. The Aerospace Corporation is at the forefront in advancing concepts, strategies and capabilities that will ensure sustainable access to space for the future.
A team at Aerospace has developed a prototype deorbit motor that could enable space operators to safely retire their spacecraft on demand. This is now more essential than ever to space missions given a new rule requiring satellites to be deorbited within 5 years of retirement instead of 25. This makes end-of-mission capabilities critical to the space architectures of the future.
“The risk of a debris collision is greater now than it's ever been,” said Jerry Fuller, Senior Engineering Specialist at Aerospace. "At the same time, there are plans to put many more satellites and many more constellations into space. Aerospace’s technology leadership should allow it to play a greater role in debris mitigation. This rocket motor technology is one of several components that Aerospace has developed toward that end.”
The deorbit motor is designed to be integrated into a spacecraft —such as a CubeSat— using a commercial off-the-shelf solid-propellant rocket. What makes it unique is a connected deflector plate and nozzle that creates spin-stabilized axial thrust to enable controlled reentry.
As the motor comes up to pressure, the deflector plate acts as an ablative surface and forces gases through various vanes circling the plate, causing the entire satellite to rotate. Once the ablative surface burns away, the motor exhaust exits in the typical fashion, producing the desired deorbit impulse.
“The deorbit motor combines the functions of a spin motor and a thrust motor into a single unit, improving Size, Weight and Power as well as reliability,” Fuller said. “Satellite programs that don’t have the overhead needed for traditional Thrust Vector Control can successfully deorbit if they can be oriented in the ram direction (aligned with the direction of flight). In fact, satellites that have lost reaction wheel control might still deorbit, if they still have attitude knowledge and can tumble into the right orientation.”
In the process of development, the cross-discipline team of experts at Aerospace collaborated to explore the possibilities of creating a motor that could lower the orbit of any sized satellite, especially smaller ones with less sophistication.
Capabilities like the deorbit motor—and more importantly, the spirit of ingenuity of the people developing them—bring forth much-needed solutions that can advance agility and flexibility to how missions are planned and executed. Future missions will need to implement new capabilities and concepts to improve the sustainability of space architectures and the broader space ecosystem.
“Aerospace has a long history in the analysis and theoretical understanding of space debris and management,” said Fuller. “This innovation can contribute more directly to deorbiting small satellites, very quickly after their missions are completed.”