(multimedia) Check out this artist’s depiction of how a retired satellite’s still usable antenna might one day be salvaged and turned into a new space asset as part of DARPA’s Phoenix program. The goal of Phoenix is to develop and demonstrate technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. By robotically removing and re-using GEO-based space apertures and antennas from de-commissioned satellites in the graveyard or disposal orbit, space “junk” could become space “asset.”
