Served space: new achievements and perspectives

Abstract

The number of works aimed at developing technologies for services in space has increased significantly over the past five years. In addition to such industrial giants as Orbital-ATK, Northrop Grumman, MDA, Maxar Technologies, startups are also entering the service market that develop and demonstrate practically operating technologies. Given this trend, it is expected that maintenance in space will become a hot topic over the next few years. The article discusses the designed and operating service spacecraft of foreign countries, the state and directions of their development. Brief characteristics and capabilities of service spacecraft are given. The directions of solving the main tasks for the design and manufacture of promising service spacecraft are outlined. Satellites MEV-1 and MEV-2, manufactured by Northrop Grumman, ELSA-d, manufactured by Astroscale and SSTL, and See also OSAM-1 by Maxar Technologies, which allows robotic refueling in space and demonstrates the possibility of constructing large structures in space without direct human involvement. The results of a study carried out using available Internet sources are summarized and presented in this material. The purpose of the article is to analyze the need, ways and methods of development of services, to assess the prospects of the technologies used.

Keywords

• service spacecraft
• spacecraft maintenance
• spacecraft refueling
• monitoring of spacecrafts
• spacecraft maneuvering
• satellite service
• spacecraft service life