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Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org<\/p>\n
Four satellite missions will launch in the coming year to\u00a0demonstrate\u00a0on-orbit\u00a0refueling,\u00a0servicing,\u00a0and repair capabilities to extend the lives of military satellites. Funded by different Department of Defense entities, each will also entail commercial\u00a0efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The missions\u00a0are critical for the Space Force, according to officials and industry executives, which sees dynamic space operations\u2014the ability to maneuver satellites as needed to either approach or avoid adversary space systems\u2014as crucial to its ability to fight and win a space conflict. Without that ability, every maneuver that expends a satellite\u2019s fuel effectively shortens its life.\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n
China, which operates a smaller space fleet, appears a step ahead in this regard. In June, two Chinese satellites docked in geosynchronous Earth orbit, performing the\u00a0first-ever on-orbit refueling<\/a>\u00a0mission in GEO.\u00a0The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency demonstrated\u00a0on-orbit years ago with satellites in low-Earth orbit and special refueling equipment in 2007.\u00a0But standards for refueling satellites have changed little since then.<\/p>\n The Space Force\u00a0is\u00a0betting the private sector can provide these capabilities, and all four missions scheduled for 2026 aim to\u00a0demonstrate\u00a0not just the technology but the business case, as well.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The four planned operations will all be in GEO, more than 22,000 miles above the earth\u2019s surface. Operating from a fixed point in the sky\u00a0relative\u00a0to the ground,\u00a0GEO offers consistent communications and coverage, with more than 500 high-end, large satellites performing crucial telecommunications and broadcasting functions.\u00a0These highly engineered spacecraft, developed at great expense and intended to have a useful life measured in decades for both government and commercial customers, are prime opportunities for life-extending services. <\/p>\n Rob Hauge, president of\u00a0SpaceLogistics, a Northrop Grumman company, said the opportunity is huge. \u201cEvery year about 10 to 20 reach their end of life because they run out of fuel,\u201d\u00a0he said. <\/p>\n Without having been designed to take on additional fuel in flight, the question becomes how to retrofit that capability to an existing system. One solution: Add a new component to the existing satellite bus, a so-called \u201cMission Extension Pod.\u201d \t\t<\/p>\n SpaceLogstics has developed its own Mission Recovery Vehicle to bridge service satellites in GEO. Equipped with an autonomous robot arm developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, and funded with DARPA money, Space Logistics will launch an MRV next year to demonstrate Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS).\u00a0Under that program, MRV will\u00a0recover a satellite and reposition it in orbit, and then, using its robotic arm, capture and install a Mission Extension Pod, attaching it to the existing satellite and giving the satellite a new lease on life, with freedom to maneuver. \u00a0<\/p>\n Hauge said once in space, the MRV can \u201cdo that again and again and again,\u201d extending the profitable life of aging satellites.\u00a0<\/p>\n The MRV can also be used for \u201canomaly resolution,\u201d said James Shoemaker, DARPA program manager for RSGS. In other words: it can repair systems. <\/p>\n About three times a year, something unknown goes wrong with a satellite in GEO, Shoemaker said.\u00a0\u201cYou\u2019ll have a partial deployment of a solar array where, perhaps the hinge just gets a little stuck,\u201d or an antenna deployment\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0go as planned, he said. Operators on the ground can try various measures to resolve the problem, but as they \u201ctry to rock the satellite\u201d to shake a stuck part loose, they also are expending some of its limited fuel.\u00a0<\/p>\n Often, when something goes wrong, operators are\u00a0basically in\u00a0the dark, Shoemaker said. MRV can maneuver near the satellite to provide \u201ca picture and a close inspection of what exactly is wrong,\u201d making it \u201ca lot easier for them to figure out a solution.\u201d\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n It\u2019s\u00a0notable, Shoemaker said, that RSGS is the second DARPA program to\u00a0demonstrate\u00a0on-orbit refueling and servicing capabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTypically, DARPA does things first to prove you can do them, and then we hand them off and start doing something different,\u201d he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Revisiting a challenge is \u201csomewhat unusual,\u201d he said, but the earlier\u00a0Orbital Express<\/a>\u00a0in 2007 was in LEO, where the economics of servicing and repair are very different. Satellites in LEO are typically smaller and less costly, making repair not necessarily worth the cost.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n