engineering

Space Infrastructure Servicing

Space Infrastructure Servicing is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Space Infrastructure Servicing rather than just read about it. In short: Space Infrastructure Servicing (SIS) is a spacecraft concept being developed by Canadian aerospace firm MDA to operate as a small-scale in-space refueling depot for communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit. In June 2017, SSL (MDA's Palo Alto, California company) announced its first commercial customer, Luxembourg-based satellite owner / operator SES S.A.

Key takeaways

Space Infrastructure Servicing belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Space Infrastructure Servicing to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Space Infrastructure Servicing from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Space Infrastructure Servicing (SIS) is a spacecraft concept being developed by Canadian aerospace firm MDA to operate as a small-scale in-space refueling depot for communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit. In June 2017, SSL (MDA's Palo Alto, California company) announced its first commercial customer, Luxembourg-based satellite owner / operator SES S.A. Maxar acquired SSL, then in 2019, SSL abandoned the SSP project.

History MDA Corporation announced in early 2010 that a small-scale geosynchronous-orbit refueling project was under development. The design point was to be a single spacecraft that would refuel other spacecraft in orbit as a satellite-servicing demonstration. The 2010 announcement indicated that MDA had already signed an option agreement "with an unidentified satellite fleet operator that has agreed to provide an aging telecommunications spacecraft for a refueling operation as the inaugural customer". Missions contemplated included not only satellite refueling but also space debris mitigation by including the vehicle capability to "push dead satellites into graveyard orbits". The early technical design point included a fuel-depot vehicle that would maneuver to an operational communications satellite, dock at the target satellite's apogee kick motor, remove a small part of the target spacecraft's thermal protection blanket, connect to a fuel-pressure line and deliver the propellant. In 2010, it was estimated that "the docking maneuver would take the communications satellite out of service for about 20 minutes". A potential business model for the service, as of March 2010, would "ask customers to pay per kilogram of fuel successfully added to their satellite, with the per-kilogram price being a function of the additional revenue the operator can expect to generate from the spacecraft's extended operational life". In March 2011, MDA announced that Intelsat was to be their inaugural launch partner and that the SIS vehicle could be ready to launch as early as 2015, with Intelsat providing up to US$280 million over the timeframe that the on-orbit services would be delivered to a portion of the Intelsat satellite fleet. As of November 2011, MDA suspended the satellite servicing mission while awaiting major decisions due soon on the scope and details on planned satellite servicing missions by U.S. government civilian and defence agencies NASA and DARPA. MDA wants to "see the NASA and DARPA bid requests, see what's in them, whether [MDA] can bid as a Canadian company, or as a U.S. company". MDA Chief Executive Officer Daniel E. Friedmann said "We can't just go ahead. I know everybody says the government is not a competitor, and yes, literally they are not a competitor. But our whole business is about winning business from the government and then taking that dual-use technology into the commercial market". In February 2012, MDA said it was awaiting "a decision on a contract bid to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) before deciding whether to shelve its work on a vehicle to service satellites and perform other chores in orbit". In a June 2012 article in The Space Review, a number of approaches to satellite servicing were discussed and contrasted. The MDA Space Infrastructure Servicing concept is reported to be somewhat more complex than the competitive ViviSat (Mission Extension Vehicle), and is considered to be similar to the concepts that NASA is investigating experimentally with a test platform called the Robotic Refueling Mission flying on the International Space Station (ISS) during the Expedition 29–32 timeframe in 2011-2013. MDA's approach "would use its manipulators to refuel or repair the spacecraft. The original announcement of the SIS by MDA in March of 2011 envisioned using it to deploy stuck [solar] arrays — like the case of Intelsat 19 — or grapple debris. Direct refueling, robotically, of a satellite is not trivial, but it's fully doable". By comparison, the DARPA Project Phoenix program has an even more complex mission concept: "cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from satellites in orbit that have been retired. DARPA envisions a servicing spacecraft that could remove a solar array, antenna, or other component from a defunct satellite and transport it to another satellite, either a newly constructed spacecraft or one in need or repairs. Phoenix is truly all about going up to retired, non-cooperative, non-controlled satellites that have been left for dead in the geosynchronous graveyard orbit, essentially, and see if we can resurrect capability out of those satellites or those satellite components". In March 2016, "Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites" (RSGS) became DARPA's new name for the Phoenix Project. In February 2017, DARPA selected MDA's Palo Alto, California company, SSL, as their commercial partner for the RSGS Program. In June 2017, SSL announced the formation of Space Infrastructure Services LLC (SIS), its contract to SSL to build SIS's first Robotic Servicing Vehicle, and its first commercial customer, Luxembourg-based satellite owner/operator SES S.A.

Abandoned SSL (as Maxar) abandoned the DARPA project in Jan 2019.

In-space refueling demonstration projects

MDA As of March 2011, MDA had secured its first major customer for the initial demonstration project. Intelsat entered into a preliminary agreement to purchase one-half of the 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) propellant payload that the MDA spacecraft would carry into geostationary orbit. Such a purchase was projected to add somewhere between two and four years of additional service life for up to five Intelsat satellites, assuming 200 kg of fuel is delivered to each commsat. SIS was envisioned to carry a toolkit designed to open most of the approximately 40 types of "fueling systems aboard satellites now in geostationary orbit".

Technical details The servicing plan for the initial satellite on the demonstration mission was:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Space Infrastructure Servicing

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Space Infrastructure Servicing claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Space Infrastructure Servicing before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Space Infrastructure Servicing ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Space Infrastructure Servicing

In research: Space Infrastructure Servicing appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Space Infrastructure Servicing in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Space Infrastructure Servicing is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Proposed spacecraft, Satellite servicing missions, Space program of Canada, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Space Infrastructure Servicing outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Space Infrastructure Servicing in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Space Infrastructure Servicing means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Space Infrastructure Servicing out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Space Infrastructure Servicing in simple terms?

Why does Space Infrastructure Servicing matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Space Infrastructure Servicing?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Space Infrastructure Servicing.