As the orbital debris environment deteriorates, the threat to spacecraft is becoming increasingly significant. Additionally, current protection techniques leave them vulnerable to objects between 1 and 10 cm. The objective for this project was to design a “defender” space vehicle capable of shielding spacecraft from objects in this range of sizes. The design was divided into three stages: first, using SPH simulations, a shield capable of defeating large projectiles was designed based on existing shield types; next, a deployment mechanism that allowed the shield to be stored compactly for launch was designed and analyzed using a vector-based kinematics and dynamics method; finally, a general design of the service module was made. The final design consisted of an eight-layer shield with an umbrella-inspired deployment mechanism. It was 3 m in diameter by 7 m long with the shield folded and had a mass of 5100 kg; proving the feasibility of this measure.

Outgoing