Nanosatellite Successfully Deorbited with Drag Sail Technology
A demonstration nanosatellite has been successfully deorbited using drag sail technology, reducing the satellite's time as space debris by an estimated 178 years, according to Space Flight Laboratory.
“The SFL drag sail technology developed for nano- and microsatellites is among the only commercially viable deorbiting devices available today, aside from propulsion.”
Space Flight Laboratory Director Dr. Robert E. Zee.
The 3.5kg 8 (≈8 pound) CanX-7 demonstration nanosatellite successfully deorbited and burned up in Earth’s atmosphere last month, just five years after drag sail deployment and roughly 178 years before it would have without any deorbit technology.
“The SFL drag sail technology developed for nano- and microsatellites is among the only commercially viable deorbiting devices available today, aside from propulsion,” said SFL Director Dr. Robert E. Zee. “The drag sails performed better than designed, deorbiting CanX-7 in far less time than the maximum 25-year target recommended by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC).”
CanX-7 was a 10x10x34cm nanosatellite built by SFL and funded by Defence Research and Development Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, COM DEV Ltd., and the Canadian Space Agency. The satellite was launched in September 2016 with a two-fold mission of demonstrating Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) message collection from space for global aircraft situational awareness, and then testing the deorbiting technology developed by SFL.
SFL deployed the four drag sails – each about one square meter in area (≈3 square feet) – on May 4, 2017, with the intent of decreasing the ballistic coefficient of the nanosatellite and using atmospheric drag to accelerate orbital decay. Mission participants observed an almost immediate change in altitude decay rate and continued tracking the orbital decay rate until CanX-7 re-entered the atmosphere on April 21, 2022.
“Orbital debris is a big concern for the space industry, and the passive de-orbit technology demonstrated on CanX-7 is an advantageous solution for nano- and microsatellites,” said SFL’s CanX-7 Mission Manager, Brad Cotten. “The mission verified that SFL’s lightweight drag sail technology is a more cost-effective and less complex method for deorbiting smaller satellites than traditional propulsion techniques.”
Additionally, the deorbiting technology allows nano- and microsatellites to be launched into a wider range of orbits than would be possible if natural orbital decay were to be relied upon, explained Cotten.
CanX-7 project participants lauded the successful end to the mission, which is the first Canadian satellite to be independently deorbited by commanded atmospheric re-entry.
According to Dr. Lauchie Scott, defense scientist with Defense Research and Development Canada, the CanX-7 drag sail deployment campaign provided a very rare opportunity to observe a satellite drastically change shape and size while being tracked by ground-based telescopes. "This view showed the nanosatellite’s brightness signature during the sail deployment and how its rotational motion evolved while the longer-term space sustainability deorbit experiment continued," he said.
(Image provided with Space Flight Laboratory news release)