Re: Repairs in space
I suspect that you and I and many here were following the ET foam sluffing damage idea to this logical conclusion because I was thinking the same EXACT thing!
A variety of sensor suites on different facets, vis-NIR, Thermal-IR. Cold, Inert Gas thrusters probably for safety reasons. For all intents and purposes, disposable.
A sphere, or some mostly radialy symmetric polygon to simplify the
reaction control system. Eye safe pulsed laser diode range detection. This might be hard due to wildly varying temperatures.