DESIGN OF LARES SEPARATION SYSTEM

LARES is a spherical passive satellite basically composed of one single piece of very dense material. Other elements are four equatorial threaded caps and 92 Cube Corner Reflectors each one maintained in place by three rings and three screws. It has been designed for optimising the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect, derived from the theory of General Relativity. To avoid onset of unknown influences on the orbital motion, or perturbations difficult to model, the requirement to avoid any protruding part from the satellite surface has been imposed. LAGEOS satellites had also such a requirement but also a longer period of time to develop a particular separation system. As a consequence the separation system of LARES became a challenging engineering problem because of the short amount of time available for development and qualification. Current design of LARES satellite does not have protruding parts. Furthermore the separation system has to grab the satellite with minimal impact on the satellite surface. This aspect is of concern because LARES satellite will be put into a relatively low orbit with respect to the LAGEOS satellites and atmospheric drag may induce small perturbations on large cavities on the satellites that therefore have to be minimized. Current solutions adopted to overpass the challenges will be described.