Orbital Debris Removal With SmallSats - Mission REMOVEDD

To address the ever-increasing problem of space debris, I propose a solution involving electrically-propulsed Small-Sats. The focus of this investigation is on the big-picture feasibility of the mission from an orbital mechanics perspective, but everything from the economics of the mission to debris rendezvous and capture is touched upon in the PDF report contained within this post.

Mission REMOVEDD aims to maximize the (importance of debris removed):(cost) ratio of the orbital debris removal effort, in order to maximize its impact and chance of applicability. This means targeting as many of the most dangerous pieces of space debris as possible within one launch and with minimally-complicated and expensive satellites. At a high level, 18 SmallSats will be released from a Falcon 9, adjust orbits to rendezvous with each SL-16 (highly dangerous Soviet rocket booster space junk), and deorbit both the debris and the SmallSat itself. This allows the mission to remove 18 of the top 20 most dangerous items of space debris for <$200 million*.

The following video demonstrates the trajectory of 6 of the 18 the SmallSats as they rendezvous and deorbit their assigned pieces of space junk.

The full PDF mission design report is shown below**.

Notes:

• ^*The cost breakdown is of course highly speculative, but allocates money in the following way:
  • $67 million for a dedicated Falcon 9 launch
  • $1.5 million for each SmallSat, totalling $27 million dollars (for context, Starlink satellites are ~6x less expensive with similar physical size and significantly more capabilities/hardware, but benefiting heavily from economies of scale.)
  • $106 million for development
• ^**Despite being brushed over in this project created for class on orbital mechanics, far and away the most challenging element of this is rendezvous and docking with an uncooperative piece of debris, which exists in an unspecified rotational state. Developing an algorithm that could reliably dock with such an item of debris using an affordable suite of sensors and a reasonable amount of computation is a subject of active research, and may not be possible for several years to come. Hopefully, my research and work in the industry will help bridge this gap.