The active space debris removal mission RemoveDebris. Part 2: In orbit operations

This is the second of two companion papers that describe the development of the RemoveDEBRIS space mission. This second article describes the in-orbit operations that were performed to demonstrate technologies to be used for the active removal of space debris, whereas the first paper described the development of the satellite's hardware. The RemoveDebris mission has been the world's first Active Debris Removal (ADR) mission to successfully demonstrate, in orbit, some cost effective technologies, including net and harpoon capture; and elements of the whole sequence of operations, like the vision-based navigation. The satellite was launched the 2nd of April 2018, to the International Space Station (ISS) and from there, on the 20th of June 2018, was deployed via the NanoRacks Kaber system into an orbit of 405 km altitude. During the mission, two 2U CubeSats have been released by the mothercraft platform as artificial debris targets, to demonstrate net capture and cameras to be used for vision based navigation. Harpoon capture has been demonstrated by deploying a target and then firing at it a harpoon tethered to the platform. The various phases of the missions have been monitored using relevant telemetry and video cameras, and this paper reports the results of the various demonstrations. •Describes a series of in-orbit demonstrations for the active removal of space debris.•Net and Harpoon debris capture systems performance are analysed.•Demonstration of Li-DAR camera for Vision Based Navigation System.•Demonstration of dragsail and discussion of anomalies and lesson learned.