ISTS 2002-d-02 SPACE ROBOTIC MISSION CONCEPTS FOR CAPTURING STRAY OBJECTS

The capture and recovery of an expensive satellite that has lost its attitude control function can be an important class of future missions for space robots. Moreover, there are tens of thousands of pieces of debris in orbit from previous missions. These orbiting debris such as the uncontrolled pieces of booster stages and obsolete satellites are a serious hazard to future orbiting spacecrafts. Thus, the use of robotic systems to capture and de-orbit uncontrolled materials from earth orbit has the potential to be another important future class of missions for space robots which should be technically similar to satellite capture. This paper describes on-orbit service system that utilizes multiple space robots for capturing and recovering valuable satellite system and for removing and changing the orbit to avoid collision from space debris.