These days, building and launching your own satellite means creating a sophisticated piece of technology — and then flinging it into space where you’ll never see it again. That means if anything breaks on the satellite, there’s not much you can do to fix it.
“Once you launch a mission, as soon as it leaves the pad, it’s never going to be touched again by human or robotic hands,” Jonathan Goff, president and CEO of Altius Space Machines, tells The Verge. “Which means that if anything goes wrong and you can’t fix it with a software update, you’re out of luck. There’s not much you can do.”
An emerging industry within the space community is trying to make launching a satellite a little less petrifying for operators. Known as satellite servicing, the business revolves around creating bots that can meet up with broken satellites in orbit to repair them, refuel them, or place them in orbits where they can last for many more years. These bots can also be used as garbage disposal units. They can nudge dead satellites closer to Earth where they get swallowed up by our planet’s atmosphere and meet a fiery end. Our latest Verge Science video explores what technologies are needed for satellite servicing and how it will work.
An emerging industry within the space community is trying to make launching a satellite a little less petrifying for operators. Known as satellite servicing, the business revolves around creating bots that can meet up with broken satellites in orbit to repair them, refuel them, or place them in orbits where they can last for many more years. These bots can also be used as garbage disposal units. They can nudge dead satellites closer to Earth where they get swallowed up by our planet’s atmosphere and meet a fiery end. Our latest Verge Science video explores what technologies are needed for satellite servicing and how it will work.
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