Detumbling Method for Uncontrolled Satellite Based on Eddy Currents

For the capture and removal of a large uncontrolled rotating satellite, a detumbling method based on the electromagnetic principle is developed and verified. A numerical method, which applies to arbitrary shapes and a nonuniform field, is used to calculate the eddy current torque of a rotating conductor in magnetic field. The numerical result of a spinning cylinder in uniform field is compared with the analytical solution, and two sets of experiment for spinning cylinder and cuboid shell with open ends are carried out to verify the numerical results in a nonuniform field. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experiments. A detumbling strategy is proposed, and a numerical simulation is carried out taking a spinning cylinder as the hypothetical target of detumbling. The results show that the detumbling strategy is effective and the detumbling rate is greatly improved by applying the detumbling magnetic field.