Mission design of a tethered robot satellite “STARS” for orbital experiment

Abstract

The Space Tethered Autonomous Robotic Satellite (STARS) was developed in Kagawa University and launched by the H-IIA rocket by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on 23 January, 2009. The primary objective of STARS is technical verification of a tethered space robot, which is connected to a mother spacecraft through a tether, proposed in 1995. Main characteristics of STARS are: (i) it is mother-daughter satellite; (ii) it becomes a tethered system on orbit; (iii) the daughter satellite is a tethered space robot. STARS consists of two satellites connected by a tether. One is a mother satellite (a mother spacecraft), which deploys and retrieves a tether connected to the other satellite. The other is a daughter satellite (a tethered space robot). The mother satellite has a tether deployment system. During tether deployment, the attitude of the daughter satellite is controlled by its own arm link motion, and a camera mounted on the daughter satellite takes a photograph of the mother satellite. It is important to design launch lock for STARS, since it has many actuation parts and it is two satellites system.