New space industry emerges: on-orbit servicing, repairing

WBy Ivan Couronne

hen satellites run out of fuel, they can no longer maintain their precise orbit, rendering them useless even if their hardware is still intact.

“It’s literally throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars,” Al Tadros, vice-president of space infrastructure and civil space at a company called SSL, said recently at a meeting in the US capital of key players in the emerging field of on-orbit servicing, or repairing satellites while they are in space.

In recent years, new aerospace companies have been founded to try and extend the lifespan of satellites, on the hunch that many clients would find this more profitable than relaunching new ones.

In 2021, his company will launch a vehicle — as part of its Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program — that is capable of servicing two to three dozen satellites in a distant geostationary orbit, some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) from Earth where there are about 500 active satellites, most in telecommunications.

This unmanned spacecraft will be able to latch onto a satellite to inspect it, refuel it, and possibly even repair it or change components, and put it back in the correct orbit.

Tadros describes it as “equivalent to a AAA servicing truck in geostationary orbit.”

And “it’s financially a very, very big opportunity,” he adds.

Telecommunications giant Intelsat, which operates 50 geostationary satellites, chose a different option and signed a contract with Space Logistics, a branch of Northrop Grumman, for its MEV, a “very simple system” vice-president Ken Lee told AFP is much like a “tow truck.”

When it launches in 2019, the spacecraft will attach itself to a broken down satellite, and reposition it in its correct orbit.

The MEV will stay attached and use its own engine to stay in orbit.

On-orbit servicing could also help cut down on the perplexing problem of mounting space debris.

Of the 23,000 space objects counted by the US military, just 1,900 are active satellites.

The rest — which move at speeds of some 12-19,000 miles (20-30,000 kilometers) per hour — includes nearly 3,000 inactive satellites, 2,000 pieces of rockets (such as the second stages of rockets) and thousands of fragments produced by two key events: the deliberate missile explosion of a Chinese satellite in 2007, and the 2009 collision of an Iridium satellite with an aging Russian one. (AFP)