Northrop Grumman’s first Mission Extension Vehicle completes first commercial undocking in space
On April 9, 2025 Northrop Grumman’s first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) successfully undocked from an Intelsat communications satellite five years after attaching itself to it and extending its operational life for that time period.
This was the first autonomous undocking by two commercial spacecraft ever.
MEV-1 has provided five years of life-extension services to IS-901, allowing Intelsat to operate this space-based asset beyond its design life. In 2020, MEV-1 successfully proved docking with IS-901 was possible in the GEO graveyard orbit and brought IS-901 back into operation in GEO. Now that life-extension services are complete, MEV-1 released the IS-901 satellite back into the GEO graveyard and is relocating to the next servicing mission.
The company did not name the satellite for MEV-1’s next servicing mission. Meanwhile the company’s second MEV remains docked to another Intelsat communications satellite, its contract extended to double the amount of time it will provide service to the satellite.
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On April 9, 2025 Northrop Grumman’s first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) successfully undocked from an Intelsat communications satellite five years after attaching itself to it and extending its operational life for that time period.
This was the first autonomous undocking by two commercial spacecraft ever.
MEV-1 has provided five years of life-extension services to IS-901, allowing Intelsat to operate this space-based asset beyond its design life. In 2020, MEV-1 successfully proved docking with IS-901 was possible in the GEO graveyard orbit and brought IS-901 back into operation in GEO. Now that life-extension services are complete, MEV-1 released the IS-901 satellite back into the GEO graveyard and is relocating to the next servicing mission.
The company did not name the satellite for MEV-1’s next servicing mission. Meanwhile the company’s second MEV remains docked to another Intelsat communications satellite, its contract extended to double the amount of time it will provide service to the satellite.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I wonder what the cost of one of these is? If you can add 30% extra lifetime to a satellite, than anything less than 30% build cost is cream…
It is surely only a matter of time until satellites are equipped with standardized refueling ports, and can be tanked up in orbit… Even pinko, Commie me can see this being a lucrative business for private enterprise
Commercial space is finally with us… Let private companies deal with the commercial stuff, and let government deal with the scientific stuff that has no direct commercial pay day, but advances our understanding of the cosmos… ( Not just NASA, but ESA, JAXA, and the Chinese space agency, who seem pretty happy to share their samples, and findings…. Some things are bigger than politics!)
“Intelsat will pay Northrop Grumman $13 million per year for the time MEV is attached to IS-901, or $65 million total.”
https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/10/13/northrop-grummans-space-tow-truck-has-finally-arri.aspx
And this bit of union protectionism:
“MEV-1 also needed a licence from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA license is required because the MEV-1 has cameras for docking that could also image the Earth, thus necessitating a remote-sensing license.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Extension_Vehicle
Is that the one that speared the satellite up its nozzle?
Yeesh…
The refilling part of this technology – suitably priced – could be a long-term business for NorGrum if Space Force adopts maneuverability as part of its satellite defense strategy. But NorGrum should also note that there are a bunch of hungry start-ups in the nascent satellite refilling business and they will not miss any opportunity to undercut a legacy prime on price.
More and more of such refilling business will be in MEO and LEO, not GEO. The future of Expensive Big Fat Targets in GEO is dim. Essentially all such military capability will be repotted from EBFTs into proliferated, far cheaper satellites with shorter replacement schedules deployed in MEO and LEO.
And, if Astranis and other small GEOsat makers are successful, remaining GEOsats will be smaller and far cheaper which will change the extend-vs.-replace computation.
When this mission started, and the MEV sent back pictures of the Intelsat satellite as it was approaching it, I sent the link to a friend of mine, because we had worked at the company when it had made the satellite. I wrote to him something like: ‘and we thought we had seen the last of that satellite when it went out the door.’ I hadn’t worked on any of those Intelsats, but he had. (However, I did work on testing some of the 800 series Intelsat satellites at another company.)
__________
Lee S,
“Let private companies deal with the commercial stuff, and let government deal with the scientific stuff that has no direct commercial pay day, but advances our understanding of the cosmos.”
A century ago, government did not do much scientific funding. Many of our great observatories were funded and made by wealthy citizens. Now if government does not want to do it, it may not get done. It certainly explains why we have had such a drop-off in the number of revolutionary inventions.
__________
Blair Ivey wrote: “Intelsat will pay Northrop Grumman $13 million per year for the time MEV is attached to IS-901, or $65 million total.”
About the time that the Intelsat 900 series was being built, I used the following rule-of-thumb costs for a geostationary commercial communication satellite: $100 million for the satellite, $100 million for the launch, and $50 million for the insurance. Launch costs have come down a bit, and insurance prices have also become lower over the past quarter century. The $65 million cost is around this estimated replacement cost, so Intelsat may have gotten its money’s worth.
__________
And, Jeff, you are correct. That is the one.
“Now if government does not want to do it, it may not get done. ”
And regulate out of existence anyone who tries.
Lee S,
A century ago, government did not do much scientific funding. Many of our great observatories were funded and made by wealthy citizens. Now if government does not want to do it, it may not get done. It certainly explains why we have had such a drop-off in the number of revolutionary inventions.
Big telescopes are still being built by private citizens in modern times. The Keck Telescopes are examples.
I’m more concerned with government doing things it shouldn’t be doing than with any alleged lacunae in their agendas. Anything actually worth doing that is not yet being done will be taken on by private means sooner or later – assuming, as Blair notes – that government doesn’t actually get in the way.
I don’t know that we have had “a drop-off in the number of revolutionary inventions.” What such inventions do you count in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries?
I think the most pervasive and influential inventions of the 19th century were the concept of interchangeable mechanical parts and cheap and abundant steel. The first came early in the 19th century and the second at mid-19th century. Both made possible most of the rest of the great inventions of the latter half of that century. And steel continues to be very important, of course. A third great invention of the 19th century was organized research and development – the only invention of Thomas Edison’s that he couldn’t patent but which made possible most of the others he could.
In the 20th century, electronics was a major field for invention as were automobiles, aviation and rocketry. Then, at mid-century, semiconductors re-invented electronics and have been getting more and more important since.
The key invention of the 21st century seems likely to be practical artificial intelligence. AI is already pretty significant and will only become more pervasive and more useful from here on. One should also give a nod to Elon Musk’s re-invention of rocketry as a reusable technology and his development of practical electric vehicles. Precise genetic editing is also a 21st century invention and will have enormous long-term importance.
So where’s the lack? I’m not seeing it.
Dick Eagleson,
My list of revolutionary inventions, by era:
1800 to 1862
– Steam powered train
– steamship
– electricity generation
– telegraph
– phonographs
– photographs
1862 to 1942 (pre-WWII):
– Astronomy and the great telescopes used to be built and operated by citizens, not the government
– Telephone
– Electric light
– moving pictures (with color and synchronized sound)
– wireless telegraph, which led to:
– radio (voice & music) and:
– television
– TNT/Dynamite (high explosives)
– synthetic dyes
– synthetic fertilizer
– anesthetics and surgery
– antibiotics
– The automobile
– the airplane
– the rocket, invented before WWII, but government made it practical (capable of taking payloads to orbit) a decade after WWII
– Air conditioning and refrigeration.
– government commissioned the invention of the jet
1942 to 2000 (government takeover of scientific exploration — central planning and control):
– the transistor (invented by citizen scientists)
– the laser (invented by citizen scientists)
– the integrated circuit (invented by universities but developed for NASA), which led to:
– The internet was military until someone invented hypertext transfer protocol (http) to make obsolete the file transfer protocol (FTP)
– the microcomputer (but these computers are used little differently than the telephone, television, and boardgames), which led to:
– the cell phone (created by citizen scientists and engineers, but these are used little differently than the telephone, television, boardgames, and the camera)
2000 to 2025:
– Additive manufacturing, AKA 3-D printing (invented by citizen engineers)
– the reusable, low-cost orbital launch vehicle (rejected by government scientists but invented by citizen engineers)
I count 8 revolutionary inventions in the past 83 years but 17 in the 80 years before that. The rate has decreased.
And, yes, Thomas Edison’s only personal invention was the think tank, giving him the right to have his name included on the patents from his lab.
Dick Eagleson,
“The key invention of the 21st century seems likely to be practical artificial intelligence. AI is already pretty significant and will only become more pervasive and more useful from here on.”
I’ll be a little impressed when it becomes intelligent enough to not help students cheat on their term papers and stops aiding and abetting fraud. It is impressive, though, that AI is able to make up stuff and create web pages just to support its lies.