Space News and Spacewatch Global report on Italian space logistics company D-Orbit's plans for a spacecraft servicing vehicle, for which it has secured an €119.6 million contract from the European Space Agency (ESA), announced at the at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC).
The D-orbit vehicle, known as the General Expansion Architecture (GEA) spacecraft-servicing vehicle, will rendezvous, dock with and take over the attitude- and orbit-control functions of a geostationary satellite.
GEA will be designed to relocate and repair satellites with a view to capturing and recycling valuable spacecraft components in orbit in the future. Its first mission, the RISE life-extension mission, is likely to occur in 2027 or 2028 and forms part of ESA’s Active Debris Removal/In-Orbit Servicing (ADRIOS) project.
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