Nebula Public Library

The awareness of the risk of uncontrolled accumulation of man-­‐made objects became significant in the late 70's and since then, a number of space debris mitigation guidelines have been published by various organizations. The general aim is to reduce the growth of space debris by ensuring that space systems are designed, operated, and disposed in a manner that prevents them from generating debris throughout their lifetime, assuring the sustainable space utilization.

The COBRA (COntactless deBRis Action) concept was studied under ESA contract and then internally by ESA, as part of ESA ́s SysNova technology assessment scheme which uses “technology challenges” and competitions to survey a comparatively large number of alternative solutions. The concept was originally proposed by an industrial consortium led by GMV form Spain with Politecnico di Milano and Thales Alenia Space from Italy. The concept came first in response to a challenge for mission concepts and technologies capable of providing a contactless Earth-bound object orbit modification system.

The Swedish PRISMA IRIDES experiment (Iterative Reduction of Inspection Distance with Embedded Safety) encompassed the transfer of the PRISMA MANGO spacecraft to the non-operational and un-prepared CNES PICARD spacecraft with close range rendezvous and inspection. The rendezvous and inspection phases were intended to be performed by on-ground calculated deltaV manoeuvers based on the available relative-navigation data.

In conclusion this Phase A-B1 study contract has provided:
• Confirmation that the mission concept described in phase 0 is feasible and relevant
• Consolidation of mission objectives and mission requirements
• An updated mission architecture and system design solving many of the problem areas identified in Phase 0
• A roadmap for distribution of relevant documentation and tools to experimenters throughout the project