Heres how robots could repair or dispose of broken satellites in orbit

These days, building and launching your own satellite means creating a sophisticated piece of technology — and then flinging it into space where you’ll never see it again. That means if anything breaks on the satellite, there’s not much you can do to fix it.

“Once you launch a mission, as soon as it leaves the pad, it’s never going to be touched again by human or robotic hands,” Jonathan Goff, president and CEO of Altius Space Machines, tells The Verge. “Which means that if anything goes wrong and you can’t fix it with a software update, you’re out of luck. There’s not much you can do.”

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