The geostationary orbit as well as the satellite systems stationed there for telecommunication, TV broadcasting, weather forecasting, etc. have high commercial and strategic value. To safeguard the huge capital investments and the usability of the orbit itself, it will soon be indispensable to have adequate remote intervention means for the servicing and repair of satellites. Since the physical, technical and economic constraints of such a mission make servicing by astronauts impossible, robotized service vehicles will have to do the work. A robot-based GSV (Geostationary Service Vehicle) similar to deep sea and nuclear servicing robots is being studied by ESA. The GSV would be a robotically equipped spacecraft launched once and kept until the end of its operational life on the stationary orbit. The spacecraft would be mostly in a dormant state waiting to be employed. Once the need for an intervention arises, the GSV is awoken and maneuvered towards the target spacecraft. For the last two intervention types, the GSV needs to capture and hold. A GSV will be unmanned and remotely controlled from ground. The robot arm has to capture the target satellite, and berth it to the GSV where it has to be docked firmly. An obvious solution is have one two large robot arms operating from the face of GSV which can access the service zone directly. This straightforward solution can adequately solve the accessibility problem but a severe limitation is that these large cranetype robots have no good manipulation capabilities. Another candidate concept is a micro-macro manipulator. This is a cascade configuration of a large manipulator carrying a small, instrument robot. The large one acts like a cherrypiker who brings a small dexterous robot to the repair zone for doing the precise part of the work.


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    Title :

    Robotics for geostationary satellite servicing


    Additional title:

    Roboter für die Reparatur von Satelliten im Weltraum


    Contributors:
    Visentin, G. (author) / Brown, D.L. (author)

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    1998


    Size :

    7 Seiten, 4 Bilder, 3 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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