Dynamic Model and System Design of a 1U CubeSat Drag Sail Module

Nowadays, the large number of objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) consists of debris, so de-orbiting strategies must be implemented to ensure satellite disposal after its End of Life (EoL). In LEO, the atmospheric drag is the dominant force, so drag sails are used to speed up the satellite re-entry. One issue of such devices is that they largely depend on attitude control. A potential solution is to design the sail as a pyramid to remain possibly aligned with the relative wind direction. The scope of this work is to analyse this geometry and provide a solution to sail storage in a 1U CubeSat module. The first part is dedicated to the implementation of the satellite dynamical model. It is used to simulate the CubeSat orbital and attitude motion during de-orbiting, to numerically prove the stabilization effect of the pyramidal sail, considering the major environmental disturbances acting on the satellite. The second part is devoted to the preliminary design of the module, containing the sail, the stowage and deployment systems.