Tag: orbital tugs

NASA adds three orbital tug startups to its contract bid list

9:55 am

NASA yesterday added three orbital tug startups to its contract bid list, allowing these companies to bid on projects that require the deployment of NASA smallsats to different orbits after launch.

NASA announced Aug. 22 that it selected Arrow Science and Technology, Impulse Space and Momentus Space for its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract. That selection allows them to compete for task orders for launching specific missions, typically small satellites willing to accept higher levels of risk in exchange for lower launch costs.

Arrow provides small satellite companies the deployment equipment used to release the satellite after launch. Impulse and Momentus have orbital tugs that not only deploy smallsats, but move them to their preferred orbit after the tug’s release from its launch rocket.

This NASA announcement allows its smallsats to be launched on either a dedicated small rocket that puts the satellite in its desired orbit or as part of a larger rideshare launch with many satellites that then uses the tug to get the satellite where it needs to be.

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Orbital tug startup Starfish Space wins $37.5 million contract from Space Force

9:55 am

Even though problems with another company’s deployment system prevented a docking test in orbit last month of its Otter Pup tug, the orbital tug startup Starfish Space has won a $37.5 million contract from Space Force to further develop its autonomous rendezvous and docking system.

The newly announced $37.5 million Space Force contract will support the development of an Otter demonstration spacecraft over the course of the next four years. In its announcement of the fixed-price contract — which was awarded through the Strategic Funding Increase program, or STRATFI — the Department of Defense said the project’s goal is to “improve maneuverability on-orbit and enable dynamic space operations docking and maneuvering of Department of Defense assets on-orbit.”

Though the docking test was prevented when the tug deploying Otter Pup (owned by a different tug company, Launcher) went into an unplanned spin, Otter Pup was deployed and brought under control. Those maneuvers however used up most of its fuel. Engineers were still able to work with another orbital tug company, D-Orbit, to maneuver and rendezvous with that company’s ION tug and thus succeed in demonstrating Pup’s rendezvous technolgoy.

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More orbital tugs reach orbit

9:44 am

When SpaceX launches a large number of smallsats and payloads on a Falcon 9 launch, as it did on March 5 from Vandenberg in California, it routinely takes several days or even months for the results from each payload or smallsat to trickle in. Two reports today illustrate the growing cottage industry of orbital tugs.

First, a company named Apex has successfuly demonstrated its first service module for satellites, designed to provide the basic services needed for satellites so that companies can focus on designing their primary mission rather than reinventing a basic satellite each time. The module was launched on March 5th, and has been operating as expected. The company hopes to begin mass producing this service module in a new factory later this year.

Second, a new orbital tug company from France, Exotrail, has successfully deployed a cubesat from its first tug. That tug was launched on a Falcon 9 smallsat launch in November, and has been testing operations since. After releasing that cubesat for Airbus’s defense division, the tug is continuing operations, acting as the service module for a second payload from Belgium that is testing its own gyros and reaction wheels for controling smallsat orientation.

These companies are small, and are focused on very specific technologies needed by smallsats to operate efficiently in space. As such, their achievements are generally more mundane and less exciting that a SpaceX Starship/Superheavy test launch, by many magnitudes. Nonetheless, their success, not only technically but financially, suggests a growing maturity to the in-orbit space industry, which will also lay the groundwork for much more sophisticated operations in the future beyond Earth orbit. The people that build these tugs will move on to build vessels that can go to the planets and do things that are presently impossible or too difficult, and do it at low cost and very quickly.

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NASA shuts down Goddard $2 billion demo refueling program

3:43 pm

After more than a decade of work and more than $1 billion spent, NASA yesterday shut down a Goddard Space Flight Center program, dubbed On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1), that would have attempted to refuel a defunct the Landsat-7 satellite.

This Space News article details the program’s long history:

OSAM-1 started about a decade ago as Restore-L, with the goal of launching as soon as 2020 to refuel Landsat 7. The mission was renamed OSAM-1 in 2020 with the addition of payloads to perform in-space assembly and manufacturing activities.

The mission, though, suffered significant cost overruns and delays. As of April 2022, the mission’s total cost, once projected to be between $626 million and $753 million, had grown to $2.05 billion and its launch delayed to December 2026. NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), in an October 2023 report, concluded the project would likely suffer additional overruns, with an estimated cost at completion as high as $2.17 billion and a launch of between March and June 2027.

The program was originally conceived by Frank “Cepi” Cepollina, who had run the program in the 1980s to use the shuttle and standard parts on satellites to successfully repair the Solar Max satellite, and then headed the program at Goddard that ran all the repair missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. It was his correct contention that designing satellites and spacecraft with standard modular parts would not only allow for replacement and repair, it would reduce the cost of getting into space while increasing increasing profit margins.

The problem was that Cepi’s operation was a government program, divorced from cost controls and profit. Unlike the many private orbital tug companies that are now building and flying the same technology, developed quickly and for relatively little, the Goddard program experienced endless delays and cost overruns. In the end, private enterprise has overtaken the government, and made this program superfluous. Kudos to NASA’s management for making the hard decision to shut it down finally.

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Company providing satellite engines for smallsats raises $28 million

8:58 am

Capitalism in space: Morpheus, a German company focused on providing small satellites engines for maneuver and de-orbit, has successfully raised $28 million in private investment capital.

Morpheus, a company originally focused on producing miniature electric thrusters, has broadened the scope of its business to offer propulsion systems and software to help satellites maneuver in orbit and deorbit at the conclusion of their missions.

Last year, Morpheus unveiled a suite of products designed to reduce the cost and complexity of operating satellite constellations. The Sphere Ecosystem includes thrusters with nontoxic propellant, plug-and-play autopilot, space mission software and a web application.

This is not the only German company moving into the new space market. Three startup rocket companies have all successfully raised capital. Morpheus’s success, along with those rocket companies, suggests that Germany is quickly transitioning from a government-run space industry to a privately-run one.

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The new in-space repair and refueling industries that are about to revolutionize space exploration

2:57 pm

Robot repair, as imagined in 1979
Robots doing work in orbit, as imagined in 1979

When Orbital ATK announced in 2016 that its robotic Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) — designed to dock with and extend the life of defunct commercial communications satellites — had won its first contract with Intelsat, that contract award only came after several years of persistent campaigning.

In fact, Orbital ATK had had great difficulties getting any satellite communications company interested. At the time, all communication satellites were in geosynchronous orbit, were expensive to build, but lasted routinely from 10 to 15 years. The satellite companies didn’t see a need to fix them when they ran out of fuel. It seems better to launch a new replacement.

Even after winning that contract with Intelsat, it was still four years before that MEV docked with Intelsat’s satellite, bringing it back to life. In the interim Northrop Grumman (which had purchased Orbital ATK in a merger) had managed just one other contract, even as it had announced upgrades to the MEV to allow it to service many satellites, not just one.

The satellite industry seemed in those days to be largely resistant to the concept of repairing and refueling its older satellites.

No more. We are on the cusp of a major revolution in satellite operations, driven first by innovations like the MEV, but accelerated greatly by the new satellite companies launching low orbit constellations. These new companies are willing to take risks, and thus have also shown an eager desire to link their satellites to a variety of in-space services that they themselves did not wish to provide, from satellite repair and refueling to tug services to space junk removal to quick and controlled de-orbit technologies.

The variety and innovation of this new industry is somewhat astonishing, especially considering how young an industry it is.
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The new satellite industry, energized by freedom

12:30 pm

Liberty enlightening the world
Liberty enlightening the world, both on it and in space.

Last week SpaceX successfully completed its 22nd launch in 2022, sending 59 smallsats into orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket.

In the past few decades, the launch of a smallsat would generally have not merited much further coverage. These satellites, almost always based on the 10-centimeter (or 4-inch) square cubesat design, had generally been short term objects built almost always by university students not so much to do space research as to simply learn how to build satellites and learn how they operated in orbit.

This has now all changed, fueled both by the immense drop in launch costs generated by the competition between the new rockets built by SpaceX and the new emerging smallsat rocket companies (Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra) and by the improved capabilities of miniaturized components. Cubesats can now do far more despite being tiny, and they can be launched for much less money.

The result has been wonderfully illustrated by the satellites launched last week on that Falcon 9. Below is a short list of the press releases in the past few days, announcing the successful activation of these satellites:
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