On-orbit satellite servicing refers to refueling or repairing space satellites while in orbit. New commercial interest in on-orbit servicing of satellites is in large part due to the decreased costs of launching commercial satellites and the rise of low orbit, rather than geostationary, satellites for which servicing costs less.

History

Although servicing of satellites has been theoretically considered since the early days of humans attaining the capability of

spaceflight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in o ...

, little of it was done in the earliest decades. The term is usually thought of as meaning

autonomous In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ...

telerobotic Telerobotics is the area of robotics concerned with the control of semi-autonomous robots from a distance, chiefly using television, wireless networks (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the Deep Space Network) or tethered connections. It is a comb ...

servicing of a satellite by robotic spacecraft, but can also mean servicing that occurs by

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

astronauts, such as repeated and regular servicing of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest Modular design, modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos ( ...

(ISS) from 1998 to the present day. The first orbital repair was made by

James van Hoften James Dougal Adrianus "Ox" van Hoften (born June 11, 1944 ) is an American civil and hydraulic engineer, retired U.S. Navy officer and aviator, and a former astronaut for NASA. Personal data Van Hoften was born June 11, 1944, in Fresno, Californ ...

and George Nelson in 1984 during their mission to

Solar Maximum Mission The Solar Maximum Mission satellite (or SolarMax) was designed to investigate Solar phenomena, particularly solar flares. It was launched on February 14, 1980. The SMM was the first satellite based on the Multimission Modular Spacecraft bus manuf ...

(SMM) satellite. One famous sequence of servicing a satellite by astronauts was the several flights of the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

to the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ver ...

(HST) in 1993–2009 for manual (human-assisted) subsystem-replacement to repair or extend the life of the HST. The five

Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versa ...

were

STS-61 STS-61 was the first NASA Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle ''Endeavour''. The mission launched on 2 December 1993 from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The mission restored the spacebor ...

in 1993,

STS-82 STS-82 was the 22nd flight of the Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' and the 82nd mission of the Space Shuttle program. It was NASA's second mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, during which ''Discovery's'' crew repaired and upgraded the tel ...

in 1997, STS-103 in 1999,

STS-109 STS-109 (SM3B) was a Space Shuttle mission that launched from the Kennedy Space Center on 1 March 2002. It was the 108th mission of the Space Shuttle program, the 27th flight of the orbiter ''Columbia'' and the fourth servicing of the Hubble Spac ...

in 2002, and

STS-125 STS-125, or HST-SM4 (Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4), was the fifth and final Space Shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the last solo flight of the Space Shuttle ''Atlantis''. The launch of the Space Shuttle ''Atl ...

in 2009.

Orbital Express Orbital Express: ASTRO and NEXTSat Orbital Express was a space mission managed by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a team led by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The Orbital Express p ...

was a space mission managed by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

(DARPA) and a team led by engineers at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

Marshall Space Flight Center The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama ( Huntsville postal address), is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first ...

(MSFC). The Orbital Express program was aimed at developing "a safe and cost-effective approach to autonomously service satellites in orbit". The system consisted of two

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to spaceflight, fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth ...

: the

ASTRO Astro may refer to: Entertainment and media * Astro (South Korean band), a South Korean boy band * Astro (UB40) (1957–2021), member of the British reggae band UB40 * Astro (Chilean band), a Chilean indie rock band * Astro (Japanese band), a ...

servicing satellite, and a prototype modular next-generation serviceable satellite;

NEXTSat NEXTSat, or Next Generation Satellite and Commodities Spacecraft (NEXTSat/CSC) is an American technology demonstration satellite which was operated as part of the Orbital Express programme. It was used as a target spacecraft for a demonstration of ...

. The mission launched from

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the stat ...

on 8 March 2007, aboard an

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas launch vehicle family. It was originally designed by Lockheed Martin, now being operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed Marti ...

expendable launch vehicle An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are either destroyed during reentry or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of several rocket s ...

. The launch was part of the

United States Space Force The United States Space Force (USSF) is the Space force, space service branch of the United States Armed Forces, U.S. Armed Forces, one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and the world's only inde ...

Space Test Program The Space Test Program (STP) is the primary provider of spaceflight for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) space science and technology community. STP is managed by a group within the Advanced Systems and Development Directorate, a ...

STP-1 mission. A collaboration was initiated in 2012 by the

— called

DARPA Phoenix The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

— with the aim to recycle retired satellite parts into new on-orbit satellite assets, principally focused on satellites in the geosynchronous

Clarke Belt A geostationary orbit, also referred to as a geosynchronous equatorial orbit''Geostationary orbit'' and ''Geosynchronous (equatorial) orbit'' are used somewhat interchangeably in sources. (GEO), is a circular geosynchronous orbit in altitude ...

. The project was initiated in July 2012 with plans for system launches no earlier than 2016. At the time,

small satellite A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites ca ...

tests in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never m ...

were projected to occur as early as 2015. Although a number of system elements were designed and tested, the U.S. government-funded development program was not continued after 2015. Another collaboration was initiated in 2017 by DARPA between certain researchers and U.S. government contractors to develop rules for the future commercial use of in-orbit satellite repair. Although commercial launches to space are

regulated Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. F ...

by government agencies, satellite servicing protocols have not yet been developed. In 2016, INTESLAT contracted for Orbital-ATK/

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military tec ...

company to use the MEV-1 to service the

Intelsat 901 Intelsat 901 (IS-901) was the first of nine new Intelsat satellites launched in June 2001 at 18° West, providing Ku-band spot beam coverage for Europe and C-band coverage for the Atlantic Ocean region. It is capable of selectable split upli ...

satellite. The servicing mission was accomplished in 2019 allowing INTELSAT 901's operational lifetime to be extended by five years. Following the success of that mission, Northrop Grumman was contracted by the U.S. government to study the possibility of servicing U.S. national security satellites. In 2022, Lockheed-Martin proposed the Mission Augmentation Port (MAP) interface standard for on-orbit satellite servicing and mission augmentation.''Lockheed Martin releases open-source interface standard for on-orbit docking''
/ref>

References

{{Reflist

External links

On-orbit Servicing Assembly and Manufacturing 1 Mission (OSAM-1) at NASA

Northrop Grumman SpaceLogistics Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1)

History

See also

References

External links