February 2024
ADEO in top position in NASA’s technology report
HPS with ADEO in top position in NASA’s technology report
Since its inception, the U.S. space agency NASA has been the primary driver of progress in aerospace technology. NASA’s Scientific and Technical Information (STI) program plays a key role in ensuring that NASA maintains this important role. Its Technical Reports Server contains one of the largest collections of aerospace science STI in the world, including “Technical Publications” on critical research and achievements of lasting value.
Focus on deorbit technologies
The aim of the latest publication, published in February 2024, on groundbreaking technologies, particularly in the field of small satellites, is, among other things, to present the world’s leading deorbit technologies, which can be used to technically implement the new regulation on the disposal of LEO satellites, which has been sharply limited from 25 to 5 years in both the USA and Europe. In its evaluation criteria for technologies, NASA is primarily guided by the TRL standard of the respective products and also pays great attention to the scalability achieved.
ADEO has it all: top values up to TRL-9, scalability and flight successes
According to NASA, the deployable brake sail system ADEO from HPS occupies the leading position on the global market in the category of passive deorbit systems. This is because ADEO not only offers technological maturity up to the peak value of TRL-9, but also a successful flight heritage and is also prepared for equipping various small satellite formats thanks to the HPS series production of an entire product family. This broad protection of HPS’s leading position with ADEO has been widely recognized by NASA – despite the fact that it is a competitor with several projects in this field:
“The Drag Augmentation Deorbiting System (ADEO) is a drag sail developed by the German company High Performance Space Structure Systems (HPS). The sail is scalable and HPS has already launched a number of missions with different configurations up to TRL 9. The ADEO-N series is tailored for small satellite missions of 20-250 kg, while the ADEO-M and ADEO-L series are designed for larger missions of 100-700 kg and 500-1500 kg respectively. The ADEO-N series corresponds to a sail size of 5±2 m2, while ADEO-M covers areas of 15 ± 5 m2. There are also smaller versions, especially for picosatellites (ADEO-P) and CubeSats (ADEO-C), and the possibility to configure the sail size according to customer requirements. Various missions have already tested the ADEO-N product family. The NABEO-1 was launched on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket kick stage in 2018. The sail was deployed just 90 minutes after launch. There was a problem measuring whether the drag sail was initially deployed, but visual ground observations confirmed successful deployment and performance. At the end of December 2022, the ADEO-N2 sail was launched into space by the ION-2 spacecraft carrier of the Italian launch service provider D-Orbit. The successful deployment was recorded by the ION carrier’s on-board camera.”
ADEO – Deorbit technology as a prerequisite for launch authorization
With this presentation in one of the most important technology documentations of the US space agency NASA, HPS with ADEO becomes a highly visible beacon in the worldwide field of passive deorbit systems for all satellites that have to comply with the new 5-year deorbit requirement in order to be approved for launch by American or European launchers
