Speaker
Description
Through its Clean Space (CS) initiative, ESA has been devoting an increasing amount of attention to the environmental impact of its activities, including its own operations as well as operations performed by European industry in the frame of ESA programmes. On-orbit manufacturing and recycling is a concept that has been gaining momentum in the past years. A number of isolated technology developments have taken place recently. The reuse of space debris in orbit would turn a problem into a valuable asset.
The On-orbit Servicing Satellite design study falls under the industrial studies, part of the overall OMAR initiative. As such, it addresses the main system segments based on established architectures (i.e. paradigm change on satellites design, on-orbit manufacturing/recycling plant, and logistics segment including servicing vehicles).
Seven scenarios were compared, from which two scenarios were downselected for further investigation (Scenario A: OSS for LEO constellation manufacturing and servicing, and Scenario H: versatile OSS for Geo S/C, from telecommunication GeoHub to Cloud S/C), and Scenario H was finally chosen for preliminary mission design.
A specific use case was selected for this design, based on the choice of items to manufacture in orbit: a large telecommunication satellite is launched with most of its solar arrays, radiators and reflectors missing, taking advantage of the mass saving to increase the payload power and capability. The missing items are
manufactured in near-geostationary orbit by the Main Station from raw materials delivered by a Resupply S/C.
The study concludes with an investigation into technology gaps and a proposed development plan, identifying additive manufacturing of metals and liquid glues as key technologies to progress.
