-
Asked by Dobby to Camilla on 17 Jun 2015.
-
Camilla Weiss answered on 17 Jun 2015:
Good question Dobby! This is something that would be really helpful since as you probably know, we can’t get into space to fix our satellites (they did once send satellites into space to fix the hubble telescope which was the first and only time a satellite has been fixed in space!). In a way we try to design our satellites to be able to get out of trouble. For example if something fails, say one of the reaction wheels which helps keep the satellite steady, there is an inbuilt sequence of commands in the software which makes sure the satellite gets put into a safe mode until someone on the ground can investigate. We also make sure we can upload software from the ground to space so if we discover something wrong we can try to fix it with software.
There are some interesting mission ideas to use tiny little satellites to build bigger ones, like lego! This could mean that if one of the blocks fails another one could take its place. Cool!
-
Comments
Camilla commented on :
I just read this cool article about how some jellyfish re-arrange their limbs if they lose one (google moon jellyfish rearrange limbs). Scientists are now studying them to see if they can use the same idea to build self-repairing robots. So maybe one days we’ll be able to do something similar with satellites!
Katie commented on :
That sounds great – I like the idea of something that can use other bits to replace things – also a bit like star fish and their stomachs too!
When satellites get up into space, we can change the software that they’re running. What we have done in the past is change the software – so basically, we give it new instructions.
For example: a thruster on one spacecraft (they control where it moves to) wasn’t working, so we changed the software so that instead of trying to use that thruster, it used the other thrusters that were on the spacecraft, just in a different way.