Unmanned on-orbit servicing (OOS) - A Roadmap to the future, ROKVISS & the TECSAS mission
- Paper number
IAC-05-D3.2.02
- Author
Mr. Bernd Sommer, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany
- Year
2005
- Abstract
Besides technical and scientific aspects more and more the commercial and economic potential of this specific field of activities is an important driver for programmatic decisions. The modern society constantly creates increasing needs for advanced worldwide tele-communication and navigation, reliable weather forecasts, transnational agriculture planning etc.. This is of course directly translatable into technical and technological requirements for the extension and operation of an orbital infrastructure. But clearly, since space activities are no longer just driven by scientific goals space flight entered into a new era. Space activities started out from mainly being funded by public/governmental budgets but now more and more commercial undertakings are underway to adequately serve Earth’s population. This is a new quality of space flight and consequently leads to a new quality of requirements, requirements which reflect and have to reflect the economical boundary conditions necessary to create and run a viable business. In future the programs of the space agencies also have to take these findings into account. They need to respond to them by reviewing critically their existing programs and, if necessary, come up with a redefinition of their programmatic emphasis. DLR considers the mastering of the capabilities for on-orbit servicing and putting in place related systems on orbit and on ground as major stepping stones on the way to manned and unmanned exploration the Solar System. The activities at DLR are threefold. They concentrate on the development of a deeper understanding of the field incl. the creation of forward-looking and advanced space infrastructure concepts to facilitate commercially viable enterprises. They concentrate on component development and qualification. And they concentrate on end-to-end system demonstration and verification. The second OOS workshop (Unmanned On-Orbit-Servicing) was held in 2004 in Vancouver, Canada. The results of this workshop, a roadmap to the future of OOS, will be presented. On the component side the ROKVISS (robotic component verification on ISS) mission is currently being performed and the paper will present significant results. On the end-to-end system demonstration and verification side DLR space management together with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Russian Space Agency (FSA) is preparing the preliminary design for the TECSAS mission. TECSAS stands for "TEChnology Satellite for the demonstration and verification of Space systems". Using a small servicer and a client satellite platform an experimental OOS technology verification mission shall be conducted. The paper will present the preliminary satellite design as well as the mission concept and the operational program.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-D3.2.02.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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