At present, the largest part of the catalogued space debris population consists of fragments originating from accidental explosions of spacecraft and upper stages, but it is expected that hypervelocity collisions involving large objects could become the primary source of new debris in the mid-term future. In this context, understanding the physical processes involved in spacecraft collisions is crucial, because these big impacts are one of the key drivers of the long-term evolution of the amount of space debris.

While the vast majority of space debris still stems from explosion events of satellites and rocket upper stages, current forecasts state that collisions, such as those between the Cosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 satellites in 2009, will play a dominant role in the mid-term future when a critical spatial density of satellites has been reached. In order to assess the risks emanating from space debris, a deeper understanding of the formation and residence time of breakup debris in orbit is essential for operational activities.

The main objective of this study 'DETUMBLING – Investigation of Active Detumbling Solutions for Debris Removal' was to propose and investigate a contact-based de-tumbling strategy using a robotic arm. Realistic models were developed for the chaser with robotic-arm, target and composite systems. Specific GNC strategies were developed for the different phases of the mission: robotic-arm deployment synchronisation with the target de-tumbling the composite.

The objective of this document is the presentation of the final synthesis of the activity “HIPNOS”, Development of a representative HW/SW solution for a high-performance processing platform for Active Debris Removal missions. Implement COTS-based solution as Demonstration of the activity.
HIPNOS includes trade-off study of processing technologies, processing space-grade and COTS devices, processing architectures, trade-off for computer vision algorithms, and demonstrator of the selected solution.
The scope and objectives of the activity are: