On Orbit Satellite Servicing from a Vehicle Routing Viewpoint

With advances in modularity and miniaturization, we are now at a stage where it is technologically and economically feasible to deploy fleets of similar satellites into Earth orbit. The concept of On-Orbit Servicing makes this scenario even more attractive since it can potentially reduce satellite costs and extend their lifetimes. A servicing satellite (servicer) can perform a number of life-extension tasks such as refueling and repair. This paper considers economic viability of the on-orbit satellite servicing problem by considering the economics of various servicer routing policies. In this paper the servicer routing problem is formulated as a Markov Decision Problem (MDP) and policy iteration method is used to find the optimal policy. Moreover, as the size of the state space increases exponentially with the number of satellites and servicers, methods are outlined to simplify the problem so that it can be solved in polynomial time.