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ESA Satellite Recovers: Total Loss To Geostationary
Slimbob writes "About 2 years ago an Ariane 5 rocket malfunctioned and left a very expensive Artemis satellite in an unusable orbit. Well, over the course of 18 months, the European Space Agency actually managed to push the satellite into a usable orbit using measly 15mN ion thrusters! They managed the feat by reprogramming about 20% of the original control software and uplinking the patches to the satellite! See the ESA press release . Achievements include the first first major reprogramming of a telecommunications satellite, the first orbital transfer to geostationary orbit using ion propulsion, and the longest ever operational drift orbit."
This kind of hacking has been going on for >30 years by NASA and the military to save satellites. Certainly saving expensive spacecraft is one of the clearly positive aspects of hacking and hacking talents.
-T
No, your energy is already up there. AFAI understand, you still need to bring something that can be ionized, then accellerated to provide the actual thrust. Advantage of the ion drive is that the exhaust speed can be higher than with a chemical rocket, so you need less fuel to produce the same thrust.