De-risk assessment: Black-box re-entry capsule for satellites

The performed de-risk study revealed that space players are aware of the D4D constraints that one day may be standard rules for Space Agencies. The need to acquire in-flight data is considered of primary importance. However, costs and benefits of in-flight experiments shall be compared. From the analysis conducted by VKI it emerged that recurrent low-cost experiments could be a winning strategy considering i) the intrinsic stochastic nature of the space-debris phenomenon; ii) the reduced measurement capabilities compared to ground experiments; iii) the high risk of a big single experiment. VKI performed therefore a preliminary conceptual design of a modular CubeSat platform (RAP.ID) that should allow to achieve the aforementioned objective at a relatively low-cost. The modularity of the platform is also guaranteed by the black-box recorder which is in charge of acquiring, storing and transmitting the data. The market analysis suggested that there are existing technologies being already developed that could serve this scope. A customized version of a promising technology, the DeCAS capsule (patent of Aviosonic Space Tech), has been tested in the VKI Plasmatron to this end.