Space debris is a big problem and will grow even more hazardous as progressively more space vehicles reach orbit and beyond in coming decades.
A test launch on Thursday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Califorinia will help aerospace engineers evaluate ways to deorbit launch vehicles to Earth that could otherwise continue to clutter up lower orbit moving at dangerous speeds.
Purdue University engineers have developed a new version of a drag sail called Spinnaker3 that will be riding on a rocket from Firefly Aerospace, part of Firefly’s DREAM Mission with education payloads aboard. Spinnaker3’s objective is to reduce the amount of time launch vehicles remain in orbit, which today can last for decades.
A livestream of the Thursday launch is available through Everyday Astronaut Deployment of the drag sail will occur at the end of the rocket’s mission will be captured by a camera mounted on the Firefly launch vehicle upper stage.
Spinnaker3 has four carbon-fiber booms, each three meters long, that deploy from the exterior of the launch vehicle’s upper stage. At full deployment the sail is 194 square feet and is make of CP1, a fluorinated polyimide developed by NeXolve. A short animation by Jackson Spencer shows the deployment:
NASA has called low Earth orbit (LEO) an “orbital junk yard” with millions of pieces of space junk flying there. The agency has pointed out that there are no international space laws to clean up the debris, with 6,000 tons of materials flying at up to 18,000 miles an hour—about seven times the speed of a bullet.
The Spinnaker3 drag sail is designed to reduce the upper stage Firefly launch vehicle’s deorbit process from 25 days to 15 days. Lab testing of the drag sail was completed in the spring after a team of students, faculty and staff at Purdue spent a year in design and developments.
David Spencer, an adjunct associate professor in aeronautics and astronautics directed the work and is also a mission manager for the Mars Sample return Campaign at NASA JPL. He also founded Vestigo Aerospace LLC, a startup producing a full line of Spinnaker drag sale prototypes for different space vehicles. The Purdue Research Foundation licenses the technology.
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