High Priority, Large Orbital Debris Remover

Busek Co. Inc. proposes to continue the development of a high priority, large orbital debris removing system. The debris remover spacecraft is called ORDER (Orbital Debris Remover). The vehicle design is derived from a general-duty space transport vehicle developed by Busek referred to as the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS). The OMS is built around a central structure called Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adaptor (ESPA). This general-duty transport has been under development with AFRL SBIR funding and significant investment from United Launch Alliance (ULA). The ORDER spacecraft uses standard interfaces and heavily leverages TRL 9 components and subsystems within the OMS baseline design. During Phase I we have reconfigured the OMS vehicle into the ORDER configurations, defined a concept of operations (CONOPS) for a design reference mission, detailed the ORDER architecture, and identified requirements, interfaces and developed a conceptual design. While the ODRER is focused on disposal of large GEOsats, it can be used for de-orbiting large LEO and MEO debris such as spent upper stages in polar orbits. In Phase II the effort will involve the system design, construction and testing of the following key subsystems: debris grappling mechanism, propulsion system, control and power management systems.