A drag sail that a team at Purdue University developed to pull launch
vehicles in space back to Earth is scheduled to undergo a test launch on
Thursday (Sept. 2).
The mission, set to take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California,
will evaluate how well the prototype helps its vehicle deorbit from space
after mission completion. A livestream of the launch will be available
through
Everyday Astronaut.
Faster deorbiting times may prevent spacecraft and launch vehicles from
turning into hazardous space debris as they wait to deorbit naturally, a
process that could take days, months or years without assistance. Abandoned,
lost or post-mission space vehicles are part of the more than nine thousand
tons of space debris currently traveling through Earth’s lower orbit at
dangerous speeds.
Deorbiting technology is a preventive approach to managing the growth of
space debris, an issue NASA has acknowledged as essential to the future of
safe space exploration.
Named the Spinnaker3, the drag sail will be riding on a rocket from Firefly
Aerospace along with six other prototypes for testing. The launch is a part
of Firefly’s DREAM Mission, carrying educational payloads into orbit.
The plan is for the drag sail to specifically deorbit the upper stage of the
Firefly launch vehicle. Developers expect the Spinnaker3 to reduce the
vehicle’s upper stage deorbiting process from 25 to 15 days.
The drag sail was produced by a team of students, faculty and staff at
Purdue’s Space Flight Projects Laboratory. The team dedicated a year to
design and development, and lab testing was completed in the spring.
Development took place under the direction of David Spencer, a Purdue
adjunct associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics.
Spencer is also mission manager for the Mars Sample Return Campaign at
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and founder of Vestigo
Aerospace LLC, a startup company producing a full line of Spinnaker drag
sail prototypes for different sizes of space vehicles. The Purdue Research
Foundation licenses the technology, and Spencer has worked with the Purdue
Foundry on business model development for the startup.
The Spinnaker3, named for the three-meter length of its carbon-fiber booms,
rides on the exterior of the launch vehicle upper stage. The booms were
provided by NASA Langley Research Center under a NASA Space Act Agreement
with Purdue. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
provided avionics for the Spinnaker3 payload and assisted with testing and
installation of Spinnaker3 on the Firefly rocket.
The sail will deploy at the end of the rocket’s mission and use atmospheric
drag to assist with the deorbiting process. At full deployment, the sail is
194 square feet and is made of CP1, a fluorinated polyimide developed by
high-performance materials designer NeXolve. An animation of the sail
deployment is
available online.
Images of the drag sail while it is in space will be captured by a camera
mounted on the Firefly launch vehicle upper stage. The vehicle’s deorbit
timeline will be evaluated based upon tracking data provided the United
States Space Command.
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Space & Astrophysics