Arly Black from @PurdueUnivNews now talking about a study looking at dragsail systems for de-orbit and targeted re-entry #orbitaldebris2019
Arly looked at how Cd is affected by altitude [it wasn't] and angle of attack of a flat sail [big effect]
MC analysis with GMAT showed a lower Cd than is typically assumed [~0.93 versus often used value of 2.2]
Flat sails don't have good aerodynamic stability, so have reduced effectiveness for de-orbiting in general. The research looked at a pyramid sail geometry, focusing on stability of angle of attack
Final study looked at targeted re-entry. For 200 km orbit case, deploying a sail resulted in re-entry within 0.38 orbits, permitting targeted re-entry if sail deploys immediately.
Great talk from Arly. Her first conference presentation she told me [it looked like she's done many - very professional!] Now facing some good questions from delegates and handling them perfectly #orbitaldebris2019
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