ETD

• deorbiting
• Electrodynamic tethers
• librations
• station-keeping.

Electrodynamic tethers (EDT) are gaining increasing attention as a sustainable solution for orbital maneuvering and post-mission disposal. By exploiting the Lorentz force generated through the interaction between a conductive tether and the Earth’s magnetic field, these systems can exchange momentum with the ionosphere without consuming propellant, enabling deorbiting, reboost, and station-keeping operations. Beyond their propulsion capability, EDTs can also function as in situ diagnostic tools, providing valuable information on plasma properties and ionospheric variability. This thesis focuses on the development of a comprehensive numerical framework to model the coupled orbital, electrodynamic and librational dynamics of bare EDTs and to investigate their potential role in detecting ionospheric disturbances associated with Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling (LAIC) phenomena. This investigation is carried out in the context of PULSAR (Planetary pULSe-tAkeR), a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) proposal developed at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). To this end, a modular simulator was developed in MATLAB, integrating orbital propagation, tether electrodynamics, and environmental modeling. Simulation results validate the framework against reference cases from the literature and demonstrate its ability to reproduce tether dynamics in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Altogether, this study provides a tool for early mission design for EDT-enabled propulsion and space-based sensing of geophysical disturbances.