Hironori A. Fujii, Takeo Watanabe, Hironori Sahara, Hirohisa Kojima, Shoichiro Takehara, Yoshiki Yamagiwa, Susumu Sasaki, Takumi Abe, Koji Tanaka, Khoichiro Oyama, Les Johnson, George V. Khazanov, Juan R. Sanmartin, Mario Charro, Michiel Kruijff, Erik J. van der Heide, Binyamin Rubin, Francisco J.Garcia de Quiros, Pavel M. Trivailo, Paul Williams
AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference 2011, 2011
A spaceflight validation of bare electrodynamic tape tether technology was conducted. A S520-25 sounding rocket was launched successfully at 05:00am on 31 August 2010 and successfully deployed 132.6m of tape tether over 120 seconds in a ballistic flight. The electrodynamic performance of the bare tape tether employed as an atmospheric probe was measured. Flight results are introduced through the present progressive report of the demonstration and the results of flight experiment are examined as the premier report of the international cooperation between Japan, Europe, USA and Australia. Future plans for maturing space tether technology, which will play an important role for future space activities, are also discussed. © 2011 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.