Current Collection Experiment of Bare Electrodynamic Tether Using Sounding Rocket

Abstract

Three innovative tether technologies, tape tether deployment, attitude control by tether robot, and current collection by bare tether, will be verified in the Tether Experiment (T-REx) by using JAXA's sounding rocket S-520 in 2010. In the experiments, the current collection experiment by bare tether is the first experiment in space in the world, and it is expected that this experiment not only will give the new knowledge in plasma physics but also will be very important for the understanding of the charging phenomenon of spaceship and the design of the electrodynamic tether system in the future. The detail and the state of preparation of the experiment are shown in this paper.