Deorbit Sail – Image Credit Surrey Space Centre

Students and researchers at the Surrey Space Centre (SSC) in the University of Surrey, Guilford, are developing the 3U CubeSat Deorbitsail. It is planned to launch on a Dnepr rocket into a 600 km Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The aims of the mission are:

(1) Deploy a large (5-by-5-metre) square Kapton sail.

(2) Deorbitsail is equipped with 3-axis-stabilizing attitude determination and control system. A novel capability of this system is pointing via Centre-Of-Mass / Centre-Of-Pressure (COM/COP) offset.

(3) The satellite will deorbit much more quickly than otherwise due to its deployable sail. Satellite pointing will be optimized by the attitude control system for maximum drag.

(4) The satellite will provide beacons which radio amateurs will be able to receive. The ISIS UHF/VHF radio will provide a 9600 bps BPSK downlink on 145.975 MHz.

DeorbitSail electronics stack – Image Credit DeorbitSail Consortium

For further information read DeOrbitSail Nanosatellite Mission
https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/d/deorbitsail

DeorbitSail: A Spacecraft Mission to deploy sails in Space http://www.athena-spu.gr/projects/DeOrbit

Kapton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapton

Deorbitsail: a deployable sail for de-orbiting by Olive R. Stohlman, University of Surrey and Vaios Lappas, University of Surrey http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2013-1806

Inspection of a co-orbital solar sail using a microthruster attitude control system
http://surreyspacecentre.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/inspection-of-a-co-orbital-solar-sail-using-a-microthruster-attitude-control-system/

Open access to latest research output from Surrey Space Centre
https://amsat-uk.org/2013/06/19/open-access-to-ssc-research/