Sergio García González

Nationality: Spanish
Funding entity: Granted by CAM and carried out within SENER

PhD Thesis

Avionic System of a Deorbit Kit Based on Electrodynamic Tethers

Supervisors

Gonzalo Sánchez Arriaga (UC3M).

Abstract

The PhD is focused on the design, development and validation of a miniatured avionic system for a deorbit kit based on bare electrodynamic tether technology. Being the actual space debris population unstable (Kessler Syndrome), the deorbit kit is aimed at covering a critical need of future space operations and can help to open a new market on deorbit technologies. The proposed avionic system shall be able to communicate with ground, determine the attitude of the mother spacecraft using Sun sensors and magnetometers and detumble it using torquerods, determine the position using a GNSS sensor, command the tether deployment system, command the electron emitter, and manage both the power received from the solar panels of the kit and the power harvested by the tether. The work is organized into four phases: (i) a requirement definition and preliminary design phase, which includes mission modelling and simulation, (ii) a procurement and detailed design phase, (iii) integration, and (iv) testing. The special needs of the avionics system of the kit distinguish it from the designs in conventional satellites, and they involve an important research and development effort.