Status: Concluded
Project Overview
AggieSat7 planned to advance Space Domain Awareness by developing technology that can collect data characterizing space objects. Space debris poses a significant risk to Earth-orbiting spacecraft, with debris smaller than 1 cm causing significant damage. The removal of small debris is prohibitively expensive, so to mitigate the impact of current debris in space, collision avoidance by active spacecraft is necessary. To make this possible, debris tracking systems must be put in place to create accurate databases of debris locations and trajectories. Our mission was designed to collect location and velocity information about space debris objects in LEO which are smaller than the limit of what is currently tracked, about 50 millimeters. The payload would consist of a LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) emitter and sensor which can collect distance and size data of objects with accuracy in the millimeter range. The data collected by AGS7 would be downlinked and added to existing databases of inactive space objects maintained by NASA and other space organizations.