Evaluation of durability in harpoon for space debris capture

One of the promising ways to remove space debris is to attach an electrodynamic tether (EDT) to debris by shooting a harpoon from an active debris removal satellite. There is a possibility for the harpoon to be removed from the surface of debris because of the tensile load of the EDT. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the pull-out force in a novel harpoon designed for the debris capturing system. This new harpoon with a barb is composed of an inner harpoon and an outer harpoon. After the penetration, the outer harpoon is deformed by the inner harpoon and so creates a barb on the tip. Harpoon shooting tests were conducted using a debris capture gun in order to study the impact of the harpoon into the aluminum alloy plate. After firing tests, pull-out tests were conducted by the universal tensile testing machine. During these tests, the harpoon was deformed after the penetration and opened a barb on the tip so the function of barb system could be confirmed. Moreover, the maximum pull-out load the harpoon can handle without being separated from the plate is measured. For some harpoons with the barb system, pull-out load was superior to the non-barb systems. In this way, the efficiency of this design of harpoon is proved, with a maximum loading of 7000 to 16000 N.