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REGULUS is an Iodine-based electric propulsion system. It has been designed and manufactured at the Italian company Technology for Propulsion and Innovation SpA (T4i). REGULUS integrates the Magnetically Enhanced Plasma Thruster (MEPT) and its subsystems, namely electronics, fluidic, and thermo-structural in a volume of 1.5 U. The mass envelope is 2.5 kg, including propellant. REGULUS targets CubeSat platforms larger than 6 U and CubeSat carriers. A thrust T = 0.60 mN and a specific impulse Isp = 600 s are achieved with an input power of P = 50 W; the nominal total impulse is Itot = 3000 Ns. REGULUS has been integrated on-board of the UniSat-7 satellite and its In-orbit Demonstration (IoD) is currently ongoing. The principal topics addressed in this work are: (i) design of REGULUS, (ii) comparison of the propulsive performance obtained operating the MEPT with different propellants, namely Xenon and Iodine, (iii) qualification and acceptance tests, (iv) plume analysis, (v) the IoD.

In this paper design, implementation, laboratory and microgravity tests of a space tether length and length rate measurer are discussed. The instrument presented was part of an experimental setup consisting in a new concept of space tether deployer with retrieval capability, which was designed and built in the framework of the Drop Your Thesis! 2016 educational programme, held by the European Space Agency Education Office. The instrument working principle is based on optical sensors and is inspired to similar instruments used on SEDS and YES2 space missions. The entire setup was first tested in laboratory on a low friction rail, then in microgravity conditions at the ZARM Drop Tower. The results of the test campaign proved the functionality of the measurement instrument which allowed the experiment to meet the prefixed goals.

The dynamics of a space tether system composed of one active spacecraft, an uncontrolled large debris (e.g., a defunct satellite), and a visco-elastic tether connecting the two bodies are investigated in this paper. The active spacecraft is assumed to be equipped with a propulsive system for carrying out a tug maneuver that forces the orbital decay of the debris. The dynamical stability and the eigenfrequencies of the tethered system under the action of the thrust are investigated with both numerical and analytical models. A more complex numerical lumped-masses model provides the reference to validate the results hailing from the simplified models. Simplified models of orbital decay, tether, and debris attitude motions were derived using the Clohessy-Wiltshire equations. The results obtained with the simplified models fit very well with those from the lumped-masses model for a wide range of initial conditions. Thanks to the analytical models two resonance conditions were found, both of them affecting the attitude dynamics of the debris, that could represent a serious issue for the safety of the tug maneuver. Also, an instability mechanism that could induce the dual mass system to rotate around its center of mass under certain conditions was identified. These findings make it possible to pinpoint the set of initial conditions of the tethered system at the beginning of the thrust event that provides a dynamically stable tug maneuver for different configurations of the system (e.g., low/high thrust, stiff/elastic tethers).