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NASA Awards $127 Million Contract For Refueling Mission Spacecraft (gizmodo.com)
Satellites cost millions of dollars to be launched into space and there's no guarantee that they will work without electrical or mechanical problems once in orbit. NASA has recently announced that it will award a $127 million contract to a company that aims to use a robotic spacecraft to fix satellites in space, thus potentially saving millions of dollars in the long-run by fixing satellites that would otherwise be "expensive e-waste." Gizmodo reports: NASA has just announced that it will award a $127 million contract to the California-based satellite company Space Systems/Loral for Restore-L, a robotic spacecraft capable of grasping, refueling and relocating a satellite in low Earth orbit, in addition to testing technologies for future missions. SSL has three years to build the bot, which is projected to launch in 2020. Without the ability to refuel, a satellite's lifespan is restricted by the amount of propellant engineers can pack in its tank at launch. That lifespan can be cut even shorter should the spacecraft encounter any electrical or mechanical problems on orbit. As more and more satellites reach the end of their operational lifespans, government agencies and private companies have been working to remedy this problem by developing robots that can give satellites a tune-up in zero-gravity. DARPA, for instance, recently launched a program aimed at designing robots capable of servicing satellites at the hard-to-reach but highly-desirable perch of geosynchronous orbit, 22,000 miles above Earth. NASA's Satellite Servicing Division, meanwhile, has a handful of on-orbit repair and refueling technology demonstrators in the works, including a robotic arm with the same range of motion as a human arm, a navigation system designed to help robots rendezvous with moving objects in space, and Restore-L, which combines these and other capabilities into a multi-purpose space mechanic. For now, Restore-L's primary goal is to refuel Landsat 7, a critical Earth-monitoring satellite operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. If successful, the spacecraft may be modified for all sorts of other useful tasks, from mopping up the ever-growing halo of space junk encircling our planet, to servicing exciting new science missions like the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which will grab a multi-ton boulder from the surface of an asteroid and tow it back to orbit around the Moon.
Slightly off topic, but now that we have self driving cars, that rely on GPS satellites (or Glosnass) how do they handle fake GPS data?
i.e. when the controller of the satellite system deliberately reports false satellite location results to fuck up the calculated GPS position?
Would the car drive us off a cliff?
Currently there are two systems, one controlled by Putin, and one controlled by Putin fanbois, and really I don't trust either with my life.
That depends. Can the refueler itself be reused, for example? If you had something like Falcon 9 launching a "dumb tank" that the refueler itself would rendezvous with, the costs might be reasonable. You might be able to lift ~15 tonnes of bulk material for ~$50M-60M this way.
Also, spy sats always faced the problem of limited fuel reserves, and re-launching a KH-11 or equivalent surely can't involve cost savings compared to refueling.
Ezekiel 23:20
What if Restore-L breaks down? And then the Restore-L they send to repair Restore-L breaks down?
Or what if it gets out there, goes crazy, and starts destroying satellites willy-nilly?
#DeleteChrome
Well, we do need a good OTV (Orbital Transfer Vehicle). You could use it to move stuff from orbit to orbit as needed.
So, how much fuel is this robot going to have on board? How or why would you refuel it?
The reason you put tiny fuel tanks on satellites is that it cost a lot to launch anything on a rocket. If it didn't then the engineers would put huge tanks on things sitting in orbit. Tanks designed to last as long as the next part expected to fail.
At there aren't that many kinds of propellant in use but you'd still be out of luck if you had something using hydrazine while the only thing left on the repair 'bot is nitrogen.
Orbital transfers aren't free or cheap (ask any Kerbel Space fan.) It will be interesting to see what propulsion system is proposed. There's interest in tethers for 'propelentless station keeping or orbital transfers.
Would you send up refuel cans for the robot? Would you de-orbit the robot once it ran out of fuel? Could you recover the robot to save costs, then?
Except for the Hubble Space Telescope most satellites are not designed to be serviced. What can a hypothetical servicing robot do about dead batteries or shorted out control systems or hole solar arrays on the existing fleet in orbit?
Finally, while space is pretty big, sending something on a 'soft' collision course with a dead satellite in the prime geosync orbit sounds like a great way to create more debris just where you don't want it. But it's Loral. They will have the best people Congressional pork spending can buy on staff to ask and answer these questions.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
Back in the 1970s one of the selling points/excuses for giving up on the Saturn V etc and going for the Space Shuttle was that it could be used to refuel satellites and do repair on them - which did happen with spectacular success with the Hubble telescope. One of several major reasons that such missions were very rare is that the Space Shuttle was limited to doing missions in low earth orbit and it's a very long way to geostationary orbit from there.
A robot craft could potentially get to that distant orbit and could have a mission time far longer than the Space Shuttle ever had. Also such a mission is incredibly dangerous - if the speeds are not very closely matched the impact energy would be enormous. Accidents will happen and it's better to lose a robot and a satellite than a manned mission.
That depends. Can the refueler itself be reused, for example? If you had something like Falcon 9 launching a "dumb tank" that the refueler itself would rendezvous with, the costs might be reasonable. You might be able to lift ~15 tonnes of bulk material for ~$50M-60M this way.
Also, spy sats always faced the problem of limited fuel reserves, and re-launching a KH-11 or equivalent surely can't involve cost savings compared to refueling.
I would add to this post by saying NASA should think about using a docking port or docking device on the ISS to "host" the refueler ship. Then the thought of launching a robotic spacecraft with a fuel tank to refuel the "refueler" ship would make sense. Once refueled, the robot "fuel tank" spacecraft can fall back to Earth and burn up with almost empty fuel tanks onboard.
My logic is the "refueler drone" that stays in space might have (or need) more sophisticated devices, perhaps even electronics packs that are replaceable "in flight" by astronauts on the ISS, compared to a robotic spacecraft which could be a simpler design and proven by the Russian PROGRESS. The Russian robotic spacecraft concept is an older design that has no doubt been updated over the years, but it is well-established.
Bonus points go to NASA if they examine the refueling design used on the Russian PROGRESS robot spacecraft and figure out a way for this "refueler" to also "refuel" the ISS.
It was submitted to the firehose and voted on to the front page. You have helped justify by commenting. Cheers. Oh by the way, space is considered nerdy, I guess you never noticed before.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
How is this not news for nerds? Nerds like space, or at least some do, and this is about making stuff last longer in space.
Bonus points go to NASA if they examine the refueling design used on the Russian PROGRESS robot spacecraft and figure out a way for this "refueler" to also "refuel" the ISS.
The fuel system design is not as important here as the docking node. But the NDS/iLIDS system should be able to transfer propellants, too. The problem is that it is somewhat overengineered for unmanned vehicles.
Ezekiel 23:20
So it will only run us $127 Million for a Robot capable of making repairs to Satellites but it costs $4 Billion for AirForce 1 ???
How much are they really saving? Wouldn't it be a similar cost to just launch a new satellite than it would be to launch a larger servicing/refueling craft?
As someone mentioned if the launch vehicles can be reused then probably costs would be cheaper.
I think you also have to weigh the risks of launches. If a gov't or private company launches a replacement satellite and it blows up at launch or fails to reach orbit that could be very costly. If the satellite in orbit is working fine, then just launching some fuel or spare parts could be much less risky financially than launching a full replacement satellite. Along those lines, reducing the potential financial risk of launches can reduce launch costs throughout the industry. If a launch fails someone does pay for it somehow (e.g. a private reimbursement/guarantee, insurance policy, gov't backing, etc.) and one way or another that cost will be reflected in the larger costs of the satellite launching industry, so reducing financial risk of some launches should reduce costs everywhere.
Keep in mind too the article states this robot could potentially be used to gather or redirect space junk or asteroids, which despite sounding like long-shots could be very useful, and even an incremental step towards those goals could be valuable.
are satellites even designed to be maintained in space?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The satellites should have enough fuel aboard after deployment to maintain a stable low Earth orbit through their anticipated lifespan. Let's remember, these are technologically advanced devices which operate throughout their lifespan in the harshest environmental conditions we can reach. There are a great many satellites still in stable orbit which have been rendered inoperative through extended exposure to radiation (in space, no one can hear you burn/freeze/be irradiated). EOL is EOL, and while it may be possible to kludge some extra life out old equipment, it's still obsolete equipment subject to multiple modes of failure - not just unplanned deorbiting.
LOL!
More than likely a stealth satellite killer which can move from one to another planting remotely triggered destructive devices.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
It seems to me that this kit is in a race with EmDrive technology. If Cannae's orbital tests work out next year then it would be silly to use propellant engines for station keeping in any new hardware.
The tests are overwhelmingly likely to fail, though.
Ezekiel 23:20