The concept of a long-term service station to increase the life duration of some satellites or to remove space debris

Abstract

Every year the concentration of space debris is steadily growing, which significantly complicates the conduct of both modern and future space missions using automatic, and especially manned space vehicles. To date, over 18,000 artificial objects and fragments recorded in near-Earth space. Therefore, the issues of cleansing outer space of space debris of various sizes are quite relevant. In this article, the concept of a multirole station is studied. For the successful design of such a station that could serve spacecraft in space and successfully cope with space debris, it is necessary to consider and necessarily take into account in its further work the ballistic aspects of the orbital motion of spacecraft and the logistics of building such a station. This station could be a maintenance hub for satellites or a space debris collector. Because some satellites have very precious instruments onboard, it could be a loose of money to launch a new satellite if the first one is out of service because of a system failure or a lack of fuel. In this perspective, an orbital maintenance hub would enable to fix the failure (batteries replacement, refueling, mechanical maintenance) and to give to the satellites a new life. In this article, we also study the possibility of using such a hub to remove space debris from their orbit and to collect them until they can be deorbiting.