The requirement for a small but powerful space tug, which will be capable of autonomous orbital rendezvous, docking and translating cargos between near-earth orbits by the end of this decade to support the growing national and international space infrastructure focused near the Space Station Freedom, is described. An aggregate of missions drives the need for a space tug including reboosting decaying satellites back to their operational altitudes, retrieving failed or exhausted satellites to Shuttle or SSF for on-orbit refueling or repair, and transporting a satellite servicer system with an FTS to ailing satellites for supervised in-place repair. It is shown that the development and operation of a space tug to perform such numerous missions is more cost effective than separate module and satellite systems to perform the same tasks.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Requirements for a near-earth space tug vehicle


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    1990-10-01


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English