Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
But hasn't there been initiatives to keep expensive satellites in service? Off the top of my head refuelling in space, creating devices to launch to keep pushing them back into their orbital position etc??
|
Plausible for a satellite in low earth orbit (LEO), but really not so much for a communications satellite. These things are the size of a double decker bus and they orbit at 22,000 miles altitude (LEO is 100 to 1,000 miles). There is no rocket yet built that could get there*, and in any case the Astra satellites are not designed for in-orbit refuelling. The assumption is that once the fuel has run out, their technology is obsolete and would be replaced by launching a replacement satellite anyway.
* SpaceX’s Starship could conceivably, in time, be built in a variant that could do this task