Parametric Study of Deployment of Short and Medium Length Space Tethers
- Paper number
IAC-07-C1.I.05
- Author
Prof. Andre Mazzoleni, North Carolina State University, United States
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Space tethers have numerous applications, such as for artificial gravity systems and electrodynamic propulsion. Several tethered satellite missions have been undertaken in past, e.g. TSS (Tethered Satellite System), SEDS (Small Expendable Deployer System), and TiPS (Tether Physics and Survivability). Efficient and successful deployment was a key factor in all of these missions, and deployment depends on various parameters which define the system. In this study, a tethered satellite system is modeled and simulated over a wide range of parameters to better understand tethered satellite deployment dynamics. Since the tethers considered in this study are of short to medium length, they are treated as massless. However, to verify this assumption, equations of motion are derived with a uniform massive tether and certain cases are simulated to show that the results match very closely with the massless tether analysis. The mission is defined by several parameters and, for a given parameter set, deployment performance is studied as a function of each parameter and the initial alignment of the system with local vertical. Results show the effect of initial angular position, initial separation velocity, orbital radius, mass distribution, total deployed tether length, and deployer friction on deployment performance. Then the equations are nondimensionalized to reduce the defining parameters. With the help of this nondimensionalization, several contours and charts are developed which can aid in mission planning. A system designer can use these charts and contours to predict overall deployment performance of the system, and some case studies are presented which demonstrate the usefulness of the tools developed in this study.
- Abstract document