Posted on 01/12/2010 6:31:27 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are developing an in-orbit test bed to validate techniques for refueling satellites that weren’t designed to be refueled, using procedures growing out of the experience gained servicing the Hubble Space Telescope.
Preston Burch, the Hubble program manager, said Jan. 11 that the experiment would use the Canadian-built Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, known as Dextre, to simulate cutting into a spacecraft’s insulation, tapping into its fuel plumbing, and refilling its tanks to extend its service life.
“We’ve already developed a prototype tool that’s pretty cool that can cut through the external skin or insulation on the satellite, snip the safety wire on the cap on the fuel valve, attach the hose and turn the valve and transfer the fuel into the vehicle,” Burch said. “We’re hoping to demonstrate that on the International Space Station.”
The work started with $20 million that Congress appropriated in Fiscal 2009 to capture the lessons learned from the five Hubble-servicing missions with spacewalking astronauts, and the planning that went into a robotic servicing mission that ultimately was dropped. Burch stressed that the appropriation doesn’t cover an actual flight test, which would involve attaching a test bed to the outside of the station and putting Dextre to work on it.
“This is being proposed,” Burch said. “We’re laying the groundwork for doing that in the future funding that we expect will be coming to this team.”
(Excerpt) Read more at aviationnow.com ...
This seems like a state of the art sci-fi’esque accomplishment, but this function was propposed by Ronald Reagan and NASA in the 1980’s as part of the proposed space station Freedom. That’s what you get for R & D on the cheap.
Holy carp, Space Cowboys was a documentary, just a little ahead of it's time.
That would be awesome. Orbital re-fueling
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