YES2 deployment anniversary

Congratulations everybody! 

I find it unbelievable but true. It's been already one year since the YES2 deployment, perhaps the most ambitious student space project ever. Time raced by, as I was studying the data from many many angles. And as it turns out from my analysis performed over the last 12 months, it was a highly successful tether experiment. There are so many sources of complementary and highly detailed  data that analysis will continue for at least one more year. But many essential results have already been obtained, first rough ones early this year, then improved/detailed during the Summer months.

The YES2 students have moved on and can be found working at ESA, in responsible positions at EADS, or with new start-up companies in Poland, Greece and other countries. Our sponsor Emxys is now active and respected member in the Spanish space industry. In SSAU and other universities in Russia research on tethers is continuing, inspired by YES2. Myself I am amending my PhD work on tethers with the YES2 results. Flight data is a great addition to a thesis.

It is probably difficult to understand for an outsider what it means to have been part of YES2. Was it just an industrial project without real education?Or was it the opposite, just a student project? Of course it was neither, but a highly educational project organized in a flexible, industrial manner. Every team member knows he (or she) was part of something very special that will not easily be described or repeated. There was a great atmosphere throughout the project, and a warm feeling of being joined in doing something unique. From the beginning till the end we were surrounded by both supporters and by skeptics. There were incredible challenges - yet eventually they were all overcome.

Critical technologies never available before to European industry were developed to space standards through the continued efforts of the team members. The successful tether deployer system is the most noticeable but certainly not the only result. Each and every subsystem of the three independent YES2 modules, were designed, built and qualified by students as well as many test facilities and most software tools. The documentation that was maintained, allows efficient reproduction. Note that all detailed design work is publicly available. The YES2 approach to Project Lifecycle Management finds interest in industry, universities and ESA itself, e.g. through YES2's generic Albatros PLM tool.

ESA dedicates a special anniversary report to YES2:

http://www.esa.int/esaED/SEMCO5Q4KKF_index_0.html

The data has allowed to demonstrate deployer hardware performance, flight performance of the ejection system, simulation vs. flight data matching, deployment and trajectory reconstruction, Fotino landing capsule trajectory and dynamics, control S/W, electronics, GPS and RF performance. Already 8 complementary conference papers on the data analysis and about 10 more about post-flight simulations and design/testing were published so far this year (4S, AIAA, SPEXP, IAC). 1 Paper is submitted as a special feature in Acta Astronautica, and one for the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. Email me for digital copies of the papers.

Although the YES2 tether deployment experiment can be called a success the SpaceMail demonstration unfortunately can not (yet), as the re-entry capsule gave no sign of life after being dropped to the desert between Caspian and Aral Sea. Recovery was not an objective and although the supposed landing site has now been determined no field excursion is planned. Chances are slim that people will come across the capsule by chance in this abandoned area (there are basically no roads), but I am keeping my fingers crossed for a nice surprise one day in the future.

With all the lessons learned Delta-Utec is now developing a set of recommendations for a follow-up mission - this mission is for now simply called SpaceMail, and may be on a dedicated launcher. It would contain essentially the same tether system and mission, a custom launcher interface, slightly adjusted control electronics, and a simplified subsatellite/capsule with improved possibility of recovering the trajectory.