Orbiting 'Rest Stops' Could Repair Crumbling Satellites

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 19, 2015 @05:59AM from the maybe-stop-making-satellites-out-of-granite dept.

astroengine writes: Satellites are numerous, vital to many modern activities, and incredibly expensive to build and launch. They're constructed with redundancy and simplicity in mind because if something goes wrong after the satellite reaches orbit, we can't do much to help it. Now, NASA is talking about building an orbital service station that can perform maintenance, repair, and even refueling operations on these satellites. "Is there a way working with humans and robots together to extend the useful life of satellites, by fixing them and by not allowing fuel to spill out, but give it more propellant, close it up and send it on its way?," said Benjamin Reed, deputy director of the Satellite Servicing Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Yes, We have the technologies to be able to do it."

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Orbital plane changes by Mike+Van+Pelt · 2015-06-19 06:43 · Score: 4, Informative

This would probably be useful only for groups of satellites in the same orbital plane. The application that comes to mind is all the satellites in increasingly crowded geostationary ("Clarke") orbit, with the orbital plane going through the equator. Orbital plane changes are one of the most expensive maneuver there are in orbit. (This was one of the criticisms of the movie "Gravity". The only way a space shuttle can get from the Hubble's orbit to the ISS orbit is to land and get re-launched into the proper orbital plane. Doing it in a backpack? Ludicrous.)
A satellite repair bot making its rounds through Clarke Orbit could be extremely useful.