Long delayed and overbudget NASA satellite refueling mission expects more delays and further budget overruns
According to a new inspector general report, a long delayed and significantly overbudget NASA satellite refueling mission, dubbed OSAM-1 and first proposed around 2010, will experience more delays and further budget overruns in order to get it off the ground by 2026, at the earliest.
A NASA plan to robotically repair and refuel satellites in orbit is way behind schedule and well over budget, says NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), with most of the blame falling on space tech contractor Maxar.
Maxar, one of the largest private businesses working on NASA’s On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing mission (OSAM-1), has been involved in the project since 2016, when the space agency’s idea was smaller in scope and known as Restore-L. According to the OIG, Maxar is two years behind schedule on delivering the the project’s spacecraft bus and its Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) robotic arm, and it’s unlikely OSAM-1 will come in under its $2.05 billion budget nor meet the December 2026 launch date NASA committed to in 2022. The bus is the main craft framework, and its attached SPIDER will hopefully repair and refuel satellites in orbit, once it all gets off the ground and works.
NASA isn’t without blame for the delays, the OIG said, but Goddard Space Flight Center’s (the NASA facility where the project is being managed) “struggle with development of several key components of the servicing payload” wasn’t the main issue. “We found that project cost increases and schedule delays were primarily due to the poor performance of Maxar … and its inability to provide the spacecraft bus and SPIDER in accordance with contract requirements,” inspectors concluded in their report.
The plan has always been to refuel the Landsat-7 spacecraft in order to demonstrate robotic in-space servicing of satellites. When first proposed, the idea was untested, and the project was intended to get this industry off the ground. Since then however Northrop Grumman’s MEV servicing robot satellite has leap-frogged NASA to twice reactivate two geosynchronous satellites. At the same time, at least a half dozen other private startups have now done robotic rendezvous and docking demos in orbit, and have actual contracts for their own servicing missions.
Moreover, all the private missions have concepts that are far simplier and cheaper than NASA’s. Rather pump fuel into the defunct satellite’s tanks, the MEV simply docks with the satellite using its now useless main engine nozzle, and once attached becomes a service module with its own fuel and engines to orient and move the satellite. The other servicing startups are doing similar things. No need to develop complex robot arms and fueling systems.
In other words, private industry can learn little from this NASA’s mission. By the time it launches the industry will likely be able to run rings around it. It has become a waste of money that should be shut down, now.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to a new inspector general report, a long delayed and significantly overbudget NASA satellite refueling mission, dubbed OSAM-1 and first proposed around 2010, will experience more delays and further budget overruns in order to get it off the ground by 2026, at the earliest.
A NASA plan to robotically repair and refuel satellites in orbit is way behind schedule and well over budget, says NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), with most of the blame falling on space tech contractor Maxar.
Maxar, one of the largest private businesses working on NASA’s On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing mission (OSAM-1), has been involved in the project since 2016, when the space agency’s idea was smaller in scope and known as Restore-L. According to the OIG, Maxar is two years behind schedule on delivering the the project’s spacecraft bus and its Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) robotic arm, and it’s unlikely OSAM-1 will come in under its $2.05 billion budget nor meet the December 2026 launch date NASA committed to in 2022. The bus is the main craft framework, and its attached SPIDER will hopefully repair and refuel satellites in orbit, once it all gets off the ground and works.
NASA isn’t without blame for the delays, the OIG said, but Goddard Space Flight Center’s (the NASA facility where the project is being managed) “struggle with development of several key components of the servicing payload” wasn’t the main issue. “We found that project cost increases and schedule delays were primarily due to the poor performance of Maxar … and its inability to provide the spacecraft bus and SPIDER in accordance with contract requirements,” inspectors concluded in their report.
The plan has always been to refuel the Landsat-7 spacecraft in order to demonstrate robotic in-space servicing of satellites. When first proposed, the idea was untested, and the project was intended to get this industry off the ground. Since then however Northrop Grumman’s MEV servicing robot satellite has leap-frogged NASA to twice reactivate two geosynchronous satellites. At the same time, at least a half dozen other private startups have now done robotic rendezvous and docking demos in orbit, and have actual contracts for their own servicing missions.
Moreover, all the private missions have concepts that are far simplier and cheaper than NASA’s. Rather pump fuel into the defunct satellite’s tanks, the MEV simply docks with the satellite using its now useless main engine nozzle, and once attached becomes a service module with its own fuel and engines to orient and move the satellite. The other servicing startups are doing similar things. No need to develop complex robot arms and fueling systems.
In other words, private industry can learn little from this NASA’s mission. By the time it launches the industry will likely be able to run rings around it. It has become a waste of money that should be shut down, now.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I am surprised they do not design large permanent satellites with modular removable and replaceable engine and fuel sections.
If the fuel runs out just launch a replacement and disconnect the old one.
Each one could have a ten year supply of fuel for maneuvering and main thrust.
“In other words, private industry can learn little from this NASA’s mission.”
More specifically, it seems like any chance to contribute to SpaceX’s refueling requirements is wasted. SpaceX cannot follow the popular strategy of simply replacing an old service module with a new one… it has to actually transfer propellant to Starship, and do so repeatably, for it to be a commercial success in missions beyond LEO satellite deployment.
In zero gee, it‘s WAY easier to transfer a tank of fuel from one vehicle to another, than to pump a liquid from tank to tank.
“”””David M. Cook
October 12, 2023 at 3:49 pm
In zero gee, it‘s WAY easier to transfer a tank of fuel from one vehicle to another, than to pump a liquid from tank to tank.”””
Unproven assertion. Still have to connect to the propulsion system and transfer the contents that way. Not demonstrated yet is not proof.
Two BILLION dollars? Boy, you can buy better but you sure can’t pay more!
Transferring fuel to replenish seems overly complicated since it requires a powered and maneuvering spacecraft PLUS a docking and fuel transfer mechanism to perform the mission. Instead simply attaching a tug to the target as a replacement maneuvering unit seems far less challenging and more efficient. All that is required is an attachment scheme (like the nozzle grappling someone has demonstrated) and a control infrastructure which the tug provider obviously needs anyway. Plus the mass otherwise required for fuel to de-orbit the tug after a servicing mission (which the regulators are now going to require) would provide fuel to further extend the customer satellite’s operational life instead.
If I were in this business I’d be pursuing a modular tug that would work like this available with a range of service life expectations and control capabilities (from ground directed upon command to autonomous station keeping), and be looking to launch them as secondary payloads whenever those missions align to the orbital mechanics of my customers.
MDN: Your last paragraph succinctly describes the business plans of Northrop Grumman, Momentus, Starfish, Firefly, Impulse, D-Orbit, and Launcher, which are only some of the orbital tug/servicing companies flying satellite repair and de-orbiting missions.
NASA might have thought of doing this first, but it is now way behind the curve.
To pzatchoc
The Orbital Antenna Farm was to be a very large structure with huge dishes made to be serviced.
A handful of large structures higher up means ground astronomy can better search for NEOs
I was thinking the engines and fuel systems would be all one and just disconnect when replaced.
They could save just enough fuel to de-orbit.
Heck with a good universal system future space stations could use the very same “boosters” Just more of them.
pzatchok wrote: “I am surprised they do not design large permanent satellites with modular removable and replaceable engine and fuel sections. If the fuel runs out just launch a replacement and disconnect the old one. Each one could have a ten year supply of fuel for maneuvering and main thrust.”
and:
“I was thinking the engines and fuel systems would be all one and just disconnect when replaced.”
Generally, it would be less expensive to carry only propellants into space, and the cost of the “propulsion module” would also have to be taken into consideration in this type of solution. It may be cost effective to replace or repair parts of the propulsion module that are failing or aging, rather than replace the entire module.
However,
Many of the geostationary satellites are already built with a propulsion portion and a payload portion. The propulsion module is standard across that manufacturer’s satellites, and the payload module is mission specific. They are, unfortunately, intricately assembled in a way that precludes replacement of either one, but it is possible to begin designing satellites to have a form of “quick disconnect” in order to replace one or the other portion. There are some payloads that are relatively low tech, which means that they do not become obsolete very fast, so retaking with propellant or replacing the propulsion section may be cost effective. Other payloads are advanced tech, which means that the technology is changing fast and the payload becomes obsolete before the end of life (~15 years). In these cases, replacing the payload may be cost effective. Currently, end-of-life is based upon such things as expected obsolescence of the payload, solar array degradation, and propellant capacity.
Until the space-tug industry is more developed, I think that the replacement option is still a future “science fiction” concept. I suspect that refueling will come before repair, which will come before modular replacement. Such modular replacements could allow for satellites and space stations to last for decades longer than they do now.
The future of these concepts may also depend upon the price to orbit using Starship. It may make total replacement less expensive, or it may make life extension easily affordable.
Anyone who has been involved in payload integration would tell you that hooking things together in a spacecraft is very complicated. Do that in space without an army of technicians and test equipment, ha ha, good luck. The risks are enormous. Obviously private industry knows this because they do it all the time.
NASA is redundant at this point in these things. It serves as a place for spending tax dollars to achieve “equity” which is it’s mission now. There are tons of minority owned companies that have contracts working on OSRAM. Another set of multiple layers of management in an already overly layered management system.
OSRAM will launch behind schedule, way over budget, do it’s demo and everyone in the biz will say “that’s nice” and go back to work.
What? Cancel useless NASA programs because the private sector is already doing it better faster, cheaper? It’s just not going to happen until something fundamentally changes in DC.
pawn wrote: “Anyone who has been involved in payload integration would tell you that hooking things together in a spacecraft is very complicated. Do that in space without an army of technicians and test equipment, ha ha, good luck. The risks are enormous. Obviously private industry knows this because they do it all the time.”
I have been involved in payload integration, assembly, and test. pawn described the way things are done now, in which the interfaces are so many, so convoluted, and so widespread that modern satellites cannot be separated as payload vs bus.
However, spacecraft dock with each other routinely, and SpaceX seems to have worked out a system of quick connects/quick disconnects that could conceivably be used to mate future payloads to busses. Just because we do it in a complex way now does not mean that we always have to do it that way.
To do as pzatchok suggested would require significant changes in the way payloads and their core busses are designed and integrated, but if the results are cost effective, then the changes may be worth the development costs.
A quarter century ago, I was involved in an attempt to reduce by several months the time it took to bring a spacecraft from contract signature to launch, but changing the basic design was not something I had any control over. Instead, I was involved in the reduction of the time it took to perform environmental testing. The tests were difficult to speed up, but setup and breakdown time could be affected, doing a better job of preparing the test facility and the spacecraft before the satellite arrived at the test stand so that we could be ready for test much faster, and returning the satellite off the stand in a much more timely fashion. For our part, we could only shave days off the entire process, but if integration of the payload had been as simple as one docking and a few quick connects, weeks may have been saved from the reduced wiring, bolting, and torquing process. This would need a significant change in design and engineering philosophy for these spacecraft, but several new companies are showing us that the old ways of doing things are inefficient and costly.
When I was doing this, “continuous improvement” was one of the buzz philosophies, but we really only accomplished incremental improvements, evolutionary but not revolutionary. Thirty years ago, Robert Zubrin tried to revolutionize our approach to getting man on Mars. These days, SpaceX is running with his basic idea, adding a few new ideas of their own. A few years after Zubrin’s book, Iridium started a revolution in communication satellites that is just now beginning to blossom with at least three companies building similar, but larger, constellations.
What if satellites could also be revolutionized? Side by side testing (payload separate from bus but electrically connected by “extension” cables) could be completed and the payload assembly could be attached to the bus as easily as a spacecraft docking to the ISS, then a few quick connect cabling between the two, and now they are ready for integrated testing. Hundreds of screws and dozens of connectors just became obsolete. If only waveguide could snap together like Lego blocks, we would really have something going for us.
I sure can dream big! Can’t I?
The two systems do not even need to be integrated much beyond a data connection.
Each could have its own power systems and only be connected by a data connection and that could be short range wireless.
Something like a shielded Blue tooth system or a simple 2 wire USB style connection.
Power between the two could even be done by a simple magnetic induction pad like they use to keep your phone powered.
You could even use a plate to plate optical light data transition system. 5 different frequency lasers passing data between to plates that are just “close” to each other. Each frequency carrying a different data stream.
Plugs are so 1990’s.
Data speeds between the modules would be far faster than the data transmission up from and down to the ground.
One bus to rule them all!!
Ha ha ha. How many times have I heard this?