This project depicts an evolving vision of an Earth orbital facility that would gradually build up our capability to repair and service satellites in distress. Starting with orbital debris mitigation operations and missions like placing spacecraft in their intended orbits, station relocation and plane change operations or safely decommissioning aging and useless stations in orbit, the proposed orbital infrastructure will grow to be able to handle tasks like the specific replacement of malfunctioning or degraded subsystems aboard sub-optimally operating satellites in order to enhance their performance and life expectancy as well as evolve their capability, using a modular strategy. Preliminary studies are presented as to the nature of the projected Earth orbital environment by the turn of the century and expected mission opportunities for this architecture are explored. Alternative concepts for satellite repair facility configurations are depicted and related issues regarding the maintenance and evolution of such an infrastructure are discussed. Potential projects stemming from this open-ended architecture are also portrayed.
Evolution of a Satellite Service Facility in Earth Orbit
Sixth ASCE Specialty Conference and Exposition on Engineering, Construction, and Operations in Space ; 1998 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Space 98 ; 710-723
1998-04-21
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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