Triaxial Contact Detumbling of Large-scale Space Debris

In order to improve the active removal success rate of large-scale space debris and consume the target residual angular energy, a contact-type triaxial detumble device is designed and the detumbling process is simulated. The rotation characteristics of the target are analyzed. The dynamic characteristics of the detumbling process are determined. The structure of the detumble device is determined according to the decomposition results. The motion space and the target angular velocity interval are comprehensively considered. For the target with obvious primary direction, only the single axis detumbling on the principal inertia axis is needed. A general target needs to be simultaneously detumbling of the three axes. The simulation results of detumbling show that the target residual angular kinetic energy can be eliminated by simultaneously applying detumbling torque on the three axes of the target centroid coordinate system. For large space debris, adding a detumble device during the active removal process can reduce the feedback force during the capture process and expand the captured range of the target.