Lightweight Tunable Infrared Filter, Phase I

Status: Completed

Start Date: 2004-01-16

End Date: 2004-07-23

Description: Potential commercial applications include the retirement of satellites that have become unresponsive or unstable. For instance when this occurs in a constellation of satellites, where relative position to each other is critical, removing the defective satellite and replacing it with a new one is of great importance. A potential military application is the retirement of a spacecraft that attempts to maintain its orbit because it has become unresponsive and does not know not to fight the de-orbit process. It could also be applied to a satellite that is still responsive but it is still desired to de-orbit it.

Lead Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center