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On September 12, Skycorp Incorporated announced a new service to remove end of life geostationary satellites into graveyard orbits. The service, called SELTS for Spacecraft End of Life Service, is still some years off: construction of the SELTS spacecraft won’t begin until Skycorp receives ten reservations for the service. As Spaceref reports:
The SELTS accomplishes this by mechanically docking with a GEO satellite. The docking mechanism is a simple mechanical interface, similar to a tug guiding a larger ship at sea. A Xenon fueled solar electric propulsion system then transfers the satellite to the graveyard orbit 300 km above GEO. Skycorp founder and CEO Dennis Wingo states; “The SELTS design provides up to fifteen graveyard transfers over a three year operating life. The design has matured and we can now provide firm fixed pricing for our services”
Pricing for the service ranges from $5.85 to 7.85 million.
![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)
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