NASA has been doing some relatively quiet but important work on the International Space Station. They are investigating how to use robotics to refuel orbiting satellites. They have recently begun Phase 2 of the testing. A useful feature of the experiments is that some of the activities are controlled from the ground--thereby testing the effects of communications delays, bandwidth limitations, and limited perception.
The work is being managed by the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. They have posted their vision of a robotic servicing mission. Sadly, they fail to mention that such a mission was already flown five years ago--albeit not by NASA. Here's a video from one of the spacecraft during the 2007 mission showing one of the two spacecraft inspecting the other.
Presumably this omission by NASA has to do with the competition for resources--"if we don't mention the DARPA program, maybe no one will remember."
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Hey Gordon!
ReplyDeleteOne difference between RRM and Orbital Express is that OE demonstrated refueling of cooperatively design spacecraft, whereas RRM is supposed to demonstrate refueling of unprepared satellites. So they are not completely comparable. However, I concur with your major point, the achievements of Orbital Express seem to be getting lost. I believe the same thing is true to an even greater extent about ETS-7, which demonstrated many robotic servicing tasks, including ground-based teleoperation, in 1997, a full decade before OE.
Completely agree, Dr. Henshaw. ETS-7 was strongly in our minds at DARPA when we were developing the Orbital Express mission and operational architecture. It was an incredible accomplishment of the Japanese space program. I will be sure to include both ETS-7 and OE in the next post on "History of New Space."
DeleteThis begs the question, did ETS-7, OE and SUMO/FREND plant any seeds that will sprout, or did the seeds fall on infertile soil? I suppose only time will tell. Certainly the Augustine report was dismissive of on-orbit assembly, so that's not a positive indication. The RRM mission is a nice set of experiments, but the mechanisms being used do not seem well-suited to autonomous refueling approaches.
Perhaps it will only be the commercial sector, motivated by the economic benefits of autonomous on-orbit operations, that will finally create a robust robotic architecture out there.
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