Canadian Contribution to TECSAS Mission for a Space Demonstration of On-Orbit Servicing
- Paper number
IAC-06-D1.P.1.12
- Author
Dr. Jean-Claude Piedboeuf, Canadian Space Agency, Canada
- Coauthor
Mr. Gilles Brassard, Canadian Space Agency, Canada
- Coauthor
Mr. Michel Doyon, Canadian Space Agency, Canada
- Coauthor
Mr. Erick Dupuis, Canadian Space Agency, Canada
- Coauthor
Dr. Eric Martin, Canadian Space Agency, Canada
- Year
2006
- Abstract
If your car runs out of fuel on the highway, that will be an inconvenience but you will eventually get some help from a garage. If your satellite runs out of fuel in space, there is nothing you can do except buy a new one. On-orbit servicing is trying to change this paradigm by allowing maintenance operations on satellites in space, thus extending the life of our expensive assets. Space servicing tasks such as precision payload deployment and retrieval, on-orbit construction, EVA support, on-orbit checkout and payload repair have already been performed using Canadian technologies with the Candarm on the Shuttle and the Canadarm 2 on the ISS. Such servicing capabilities and more will be required for future generations of Reusable Launch and Space Vehicles. Companies such as Orbital Recovery Inc. are already planning to offer satellite life extension systems by sending strap-on units that will connect to the satellite thus providing replacement functionality for failed sub-systems. In addition, the current plans for planetary exploration call for some amount of servicing and assembly to be performed in space. This will require significant on-orbit infrastructure requiring state-of-the-art space automation equipment. It is anticipated that the future on-orbit robotics systems will require higher operational efficiency in an increasingly unstructured work environment. Furthermore, many spacecrafts bearing robotic elements will be unmanned. This will require technologies in autonomous and semi-autonomous operations with as little human-in-the-loop intervention as possible, adaptive robotics interfaces to handle uncooperative payloads and object recognition vision systems. TECSAS is a German-led mission with a Canadian participation to demonstrate many advanced technologies required for on-orbit servicing. The objective of the mission is to capture a client satellite in space using a servicer satellite that will be commanded either directly from ground control or through an on-board autonomous system. The servicer satellite will be equipped with an arm, a stereovision system and a gripper. In addition, an active vision system is being considered for far and near rendezvous operations. The Canadian contribution to the mission will be the CSA developed micro-satellite Quicksat, which will be the client, the module for the on-board autonomy control and the active vision system. The mission launch is planned for 2010.
- Abstract document