That's a side note to an interesting story on SpaceNews.com about the company ExLabs that's planning a mission to Apophis in 2028, before it's closest approach to Earth in April, 2029.
ExLabs (which might be the worst name for a company because of this reference) isn't really their name. Their formal name is Exploration Labs. What I don't know is if they call themselves ExLabs or if it's something the SpaceNews author came up with.
During the mission, ExLabs intends to deposit three cubesats in Apophis’ orbit. The flight also is designed to validate systems and software for future campaigns to capture and move near-Earth asteroids into stable orbits for resource acquisition.
“We’re creating a unique partnership to enable a new style of lower-cost missions in collaboration with government and commercial partners,” ExLabs CEO Matthew Schmidgall told SpaceNews.
The company is developing vehicles to host payloads from partner companies, plus robotics to capture and transport space objects - things like Apophis or smaller bodies - to new locations. The first one is called the Space Exploration and Resource Vehicle, or SERV, and it's ExLabs’ spacecraft to host payloads with a mass as high as 30 metric tons in its fully stacked configuration. Their Arachne Platform is designed to capture and transport noncooperative objects, like orbital debris removal.
All interesting but burying the lede, which is that NASA hosted a workshop last month to start discussions about options for low-cost missions to Apophis, much like the CLPS program. Find startups and other innovative companies, give them some seed money for fixed price contracts to come up with missions and the hardware to achieve the mission.
All of that is puzzling given that they've been saying for years that once OSIRIS-REx completed its mission to asteroid Bennu, it would be sent on to Apophis, and that's exactly how it happened back last September when the samples were dropped off on Earth, changing the mission's name to OSIRIS-APEX. The article about the NASA workshop talks about a NASA mission called Janus that would have sent the spacecraft on flybys of binary asteroids. Janus, part of the agency’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, was to launch as a secondary payload on the Psyche asteroid mission in 2022, but when that mission was delayed a year that second mission couldn't be flown. As a result, a couple of small satellites built for the Janus mission are just sitting around. Perhaps they could be modified for an Apophis mission.
Render of Exploration Labs' Arachne, a spacecraft designed for large debris capture. On the left end of Arachne, under the American flag, it says EX - perhaps that's what they call themselves. Credit: Exploration Labs
Somebody is going to start a business refurbishing/re-fueling sats, and do it the old fashion way. Get a big fuel tanker/tool shop with crew provisions, like a big stubby second stage put into orbit by a super hvy booster, lift it empty except for fuel to just reach orbit, have a second and 3rd launch follow with fuels and supplies.
ReplyDeleteReason for my predicting such a proposition is basic economics, it is far cheaper to refuel existing satellites than launch replacements. Everyone has their blue prints for their sats, easy to bring up fuel connectors, replacement modules, or upgrades, they did it with hubble to fantastic effect. One refuel/rehab outfit could service hundreds space vehicles normally left to de-orbit once fuel runs out. Bring up rolls of chicken wire, build a garbage/junk bin, old sats, orbital debris, anything you need to put in a safe secure spot till it can be repurposed or deorbited, besides why throw it away to begin with, nothing is junk if you have technology to say smelt the various metals, no lack of sunlight to run a vacuum smelter/furnace. Lot of practical elements in this. One rig, couple rotating crews, could accomplish a lot of services.
It is the accumulative savings over time that could make return on investment, and a well built practical repair shop potentially can last for a decade. Only takes out of the box determination and funding, get in early and you dominate the future. Lot of it uses off the shelf hardware and technology.
The first steps have already been taken: refueling satellites in the geostationary orbit. Northrup Grumman flew a satellite called the Mission Extension Vehicle or MEV-1 back in February '20 extending the life of an Intelsat out there. In April of 2021, MEV-2 docked with and extended the life of another Intelsat satellite. The last I saw, there was supposed to be a next-generation MEV flying this spring so the clock should be ticking. See this 2022 post.
DeleteA problem with refueling things up there in general isn't that they all have different fuel connectors, it's that they don't have any. Refueling those means not just finding the adapter in your tool box, it means taking the fuel system apart and rebuilding it. Or other things, like replacing batteries.
Smaller, cheaper satellites won't have the expensive features that Hubble has, but the economics has to work. I think it's going to be happening in the future, but the price of getting a satellite fixed is going to have to be lower than the cost to put a replacement up. Especially because a replacement satellite might be "better, faster, cheaper" and having crews up there to do work would seem like it has to be the most expensive approach.