Abstract Many missions could benefit from the exploitation of very low height orbits, including Earth observation, atmospheric measurement and space weather research missions. However satelliteʼs lifetime decreases very quickly when the mission requires to orbit into the dense layers of the atmosphere. The mission performance could be enhanced using innovative propulsion techniques, counteracting the effect of atmospheric drag. Among these, laser propulsion potentially offers great weight and power savings, obtained by separating the propulsion system energy source from the propelled satellite. The energy source for the propulsion system is a pulsed laser beam generated remotely, while only collecting mirrors and ablative material are necessary on the target spacecraft. A mission architecture for very low altitude nanosatellite swarms using a space-based pulsed laser propulsion is described. A simplified laser-sustained re-orbiting maneuver sequence is proposed, leading to a straightforward evaluation of the maneuver times, showing that the laser propulsion system is suitable for low altitude nanosatellite missions.
Nanosatellite swarm missions in low Earth orbit using laser propulsion
Aerospace Science and Technology ; 27 , 1 ; 179-187
2012-08-08
9 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Nanosatellite swarm missions in low Earth orbit using laser propulsion
Online Contents | 2013
|Nanosatellite Propulsion Development Program
NTRS | 1999
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