Astronomy Cast

Ep. 567: When Satellites Need a House Call

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Space is really far away, so when you send a satellite out into the void, that’s pretty much the last you’re going to be able to work on it. And if anything goes wrong, too bad, you’re out a satellite. But a new test has shown that it’s possible to actually visit and fix a satellite in space. Maybe we don’t have to throw them all away after all.

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Fraser Cain [00:01:06] Astronomy Cast, episode 567, When Satellites Need a House Call. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts -based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I’m Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today. With me, as always, Dr. Pamela Gay, Senior Scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the Director of CosmoQuest. Hey Pamela, how are you doing? 

Pamela Gay [00:01:30] I’m doing well. How are you doing, Fraser? Good. How are you responding now to the coronavirus? How are you changing your work? What’s new? 

Fraser Cain [00:01:42] So I’ve worked purely from home for the past year. I’ve worked largely from home my entire career, but I normally travel 50 % of the time. And it turns out that all the time that I was putting into waiting for airplanes, going to airplanes, getting on airplanes, leaving airplanes, there’s a lot of dead time in there. No kidding. And all of that time is now getting channeled into gardening and making my house clean. 

Pamela Gay [00:02:11] I have found objects. It’s a very big house. Very complex. 

Fraser Cain [00:02:15] I forgot I own stuff I’m now finding. Now, luckily, there’s nothing that I’m finding that I’ve like repurchased. But I have found a whole bunch of things where I’ve been like, it would be really cool if I had one of these. And I swore I had one. Well, I did. I did. And now I’m finding them. 

Pamela Gay [00:02:30] Right. So many places. It’s weird for me. I don’t know where my time is going. It’s, you know, because for me, it’s not much has changed because I wasn’t doing all that traveling. So the thing that’s been different is I’ve felt less motivated to write episodes and do like original writing and more motivated to interview people. And so because I’ve mentioned this before, everybody’s trapped at home. I’ve been able to get all of these astronauts and astronomers and stuff and interview them. And so I’ve normally I would do one live interview on my my channel a week. Now, I’m able to do like three. I could do two a day. If you know, there’s so many amazing guests that are all trapped at home looking to communicate their science. And so that’s the biggest thing for me is like. And again, I always feel nervous, like I’m overwhelming people with with too much. And yet we can see with Twitch that people can handle a tremendous amount of especially intelligent, we hope, educational content. So thanks to everybody who is putting up with me having fascinating conversations with really interesting people who are trapped at home. I’m having a lot of fun and you get to come along for the ride. 

Fraser Cain [00:03:47] And we need to give a shout out to all the creators out there who don’t have kids at home and are recognizing that they have this superpower where they can leverage their time to help others. I’m watching Dustin Gibson, our friend at OPT. 

Pamela Gay [00:04:08] It’s really like a million period. Yeah, yeah. 

Fraser Cain [00:04:10] He’s been putting out a a Instagram live every day at, I think, seven p .m. Eastern. And he’s doing virtual star parties every night. Yep. And he’s just like a powerhouse of abilities. Yeah. You’re doing more interviews. We’ve added stuff on Cosmo Quest. Yeah. But all the rest of you are making us on Cosmo Quest look sad because we’re just like adding community coffee in the morning. So we’re sitting on the Internet drinking coffee. 

Pamela Gay [00:04:45] But you can see like there’s just there’s a bottomless demand for for watching this kind of stuff now, which is great. I mean, it feels great to see everybody is is working to educate themselves, working to learn new skills, working to learn new things. Like even though this sucks and we’re trapped in our houses, people are putting this time to good use. And I hope that that even when the when the lockdown ends, people will continue to be as hungry for educational content. Speaking of educational content, space is really far away. So when you send a satellite out into the void, that’s pretty much the last you’re going to be able to work on it. And if anything goes wrong, too bad you are out of satellite. But a new test has shown that it’s possible to actually visit and fix a satellite in space. So maybe we don’t have to throw them all away after all. So this is the I think we need to for people just to understand how far away, how remote, how difficult is it to actually go and attempt to repair a satellite right now? I mean, it’s for the longest time was just thought it’s impossible. Can’t be done. Don’t bother. 

Fraser Cain [00:05:50] So so the distance, just stating the number really doesn’t help because space is roughly if you want to get to the cool stuff in low Earth orbit, you’re only going 300 miles away. 

Pamela Gay [00:06:02] You hop in your car and you’re there in a couple of hours. 

Fraser Cain [00:06:05] Exactly. We all at one point or another, probably been subjected to a 300 mile long car ride. So the distance isn’t the big deal, but the straight up part is the issue and the how fast you have to get yourself going so that you don’t come back down is an issue. So once you get to orbit, you don’t have to just get there, though, if you want to do repairs, you have to get to space, you have to match the orbit of something else. And then you have to match the orbit near it so that it’s not you’re in the exact same orbit, but on the other side of the planet. You can do that. It’s just not useful. But you have to match the orbit in the right place at the right time and then grab the thing without harming you or it. Right. It’s it’s that part. Yeah. The high speed chase around the planet. Right. 

Pamela Gay [00:07:01] The 28 ,000 kilometers per hour trip around the planet is the part that is that is the tricky part. I mean, just on a tangent. Right. People always ask, like, why don’t we just catch all these these satellites and and and do something with them? Well, you know, it’s like catching bullets. They’re all moving in different directions at different speeds in different orbits. Each one is its own special individual, you know, delicate flower of a bullet moving in 28 ,000 kilometers per hour that has to be captured. And so up until this point, right, that the idea has just been, yeah, OK, your satellite has broken down. 

Fraser Cain [00:07:40] Sucks to be you. Exactly. And there’s been a few exceptions. So the space shuttle, the good old grandpa’s pickup truck of space flight. It was designed to haul things into space, track down the stuff that had a problem, pull it out of, well, not the back pasture, but the back orbit, bring it back down to Earth, fix things. But unfortunately, just six years after it really started doing its thing in 1986, in January of 1986, we we lost the Challenger on liftoff. And in the assessment of what went wrong that took us to that point of losing one of these few orbiters that we had, it was realized that grandpa’s pickup truck just didn’t work quite as well as we liked. And it really wasn’t as reliable as we hoped. So while it could carry stuff to space, it wasn’t as safe to bring it back down. And so the decision was made that post post Challenger, we were no longer going to bring anything back to Earth. Right. But they still had that Canada arm and they still had the ability to grab things and fix things. And so there were some pretty amazing missions. Solar Max was documented by an IMAX movie that you should be able to find somewhere on the Internet. There were some tremendous efforts made to grab and fix some satellites early on. And of course, the Hubble Space Telescope is the most famous of the things that it grabbed and fixed. 

Pamela Gay [00:09:16] And I mean, before they actually did that. And so when you think about how Hubble was built, the plan was you launch Hubble from from a space shuttle. And then later on, a space shuttle flies up, they gobble up Hubble, bring it back to Earth, and then they repair it down on Earth. And so they never expected to try to do any repairs in space was all meant to be down in a nice lab on Earth where you had gravity and you had you could use intricate tools and the dexterity of your hands. You have the human hand in a regular Earth atmosphere, etc. And then when they made this rule, they’re like, OK, great. We’ve got a broken telescope that that it’s that it’s wearing down and it’s not going to last any longer. But we have this rule that we can’t bring these things back to Earth. So we have to fix them. So how did they what what did they do to be able to fix that incredible telescope? 

Fraser Cain [00:10:13] Well, the first thing they had to do was figure out how to MacGyver things so that they could lock on to these servicing panels and reach through them in ways that weren’t really meant to have people in space suits reaching through. So they created various adapters. They had to create new tools and they, oh, my goodness, practice, practice, practice. Because, well, when you’re dealing with service panels and puffy arm spacesuits, there’s always the potential to shred your arm on the service panel. 

Pamela Gay [00:10:51] Yeah. And then expose yourself, your your atmosphere to space. 

Fraser Cain [00:10:58] But after MacGyvering new connections, new tools and new ways to get into things and practicing, practicing, practicing on physical duplicates here on Earth, they went out. They matched orbits with the Hubble, which is in a higher orbit than they really wanted to take the shuttle to after they realized its limitations. It’s sort of like with grandpa’s pickup, where you like, it’s probably OK to go into town, but you don’t drive it all the way into the city. Right. With the space shuttle, Elio getting to Mir, getting to the International Space Station once that was built, those were fine. But Hubble is kind of at the top range of low Earth orbit. So they went to this higher orbit. They took that fabulous Canada arm. They matched velocities and they grabbed and they brought back and they held that Hubble over the cargo bay of the space shuttle. And they worked slowly and methodically and they made the repairs. And one of the things that they they worked on doing over time was figuring out how to basically make hot swappable components so that over the evolution of the spacecraft, as they recognize this is how we’re going to have to take care of Hubble. They made it so that each generation of astronauts kind of had a little easier of a go of it. 

Pamela Gay [00:12:23] But also they were able to attempt to replace more complicated and more ambitious portions of the of the telescope. I mean, we always laugh about gyros and, you know, very stabilizing servos, etc. And of course, this was one of the big ones. When as these started to fail, Hubble lost its ability to point accurately and the whole telescope wouldn’t have been functional. And yet they were able to swap out these fairly heavy machines designed to keep the spacecraft and install spare ones as well. Not to mention being able to replace the actual instruments. And that I find that part really exciting that that you you take this really old telescope. It’s 30 years old, pretty much like today when we’re recording this episode. And yet they were able to put in modern, more modern CCDs, more modern electronics to bring the capabilities of the telescope and keep it current. 

Fraser Cain [00:13:21] And Hubble was designed with the idea that these components, just like the lens of a camera, would be things that you could take off and put back on. This is normal in telescope design. Here on Earth, all of our big scopes are designed so that they have multiple instruments. And as you switch from one style observing run to another, you swap out what instruments that you’re using. And it’s a non -trivial process. So they figured out how to do all of this during the design process. But where it got trickster is these small screws. 

Pamela Gay [00:13:56] Yeah. These sharp edges. 

Fraser Cain [00:13:58] Yeah. They planned to do it on Earth. But they made it work and they kept upgrading and upgrading and upgrading. And what is kind of poignant right now is as amazing as all the human spaceflight development that we’re seeing is, there’s nothing that we’re developing that will currently allow humans to go out and grab and fix the Hubble one more time. Right. And so our human option is dead in the water. There’s nothing like Solar Max is going to be able to happen again. Right now, if something happens to get close enough to the International Space Station, maybe you can grab it, but you’re not going to run down a satellite with the ISS. 

Unidentified [00:14:46] Right. 

Pamela Gay [00:14:46] And so then the focus, I mean, satellites are still breaking. Oh, yeah. And it’s kind of tragic in the way that some of them break. I mean, you can have a satellite that is perfectly functional doing a fantastic job and it just happens to run out of fuel. Yes. And so and we saw this with Spitzer. We saw this with, in the end, Kepler. Kepler died for because of reaction wheels, but also it ran out of fuel. And we’ve seen this happen again and again. So humans can’t do the repair, but maybe robots can. 

Fraser Cain [00:15:18] And this is the really exciting part. And we started really talking about this as early as the mid 80s. In 88, 89, we already had template vehicles that were designed to go out and grab space junk. And grabbing space junk is a less sensitive project because if you bang around the solar panel on something that you’re planning to deorbit, it’s OK. 

Pamela Gay [00:15:45] No one’s upset. 

Fraser Cain [00:15:47] But this idea of going out and grabbing hold of something has been around since the 80s. The technology has been prototyped since the 80s. But we are finally starting to launch vehicles. And by we, in this case, I mean, Northrop Grumman is finally starting to launch a vehicle that went out and it grabbed an Intel sat that was perfectly fine. But out of fuel, all of its hardware, all of its, excuse me, all of its hardware, all of its software, everything was still functional. It just needed a friend to give it a lift. And this is where Northrop Grumman satellite really stepped up the game of what is possible. 

Pamela Gay [00:16:32] Yeah. And so this is a technology that’s been it’s been around for a while. They’re called the the Mission Extension Vehicle. And this first one was M .E .V. one. And the goal with these is for them to have additional power systems, additional propellant on board, its own reaction wheels, etc. It will bolt on to an existing satellite that’s run out of that propellant and then be able to provide the the ability to reorient the ability to put it back into the right orbit and to continue pointing it at wherever it’s attempting to do to do its service. And so far, this first attempt has seems to have worked well. It’s given this satellite a new lease on life. 

Fraser Cain [00:17:18] And they were originally planning to only be docked together for about five years. This is happening up at geostationary altitudes, so significantly higher up beyond the reach of anything that human beings have been even considering working at. And at geostationary orbits, it requires more energy to bring something down and burn it up in the atmosphere than it takes to boost it up into a higher parking orbit where it’s not in danger of crashing into anything we like. So the plan originally was to dock together for about five years, then boost that IntelSat up to that parking orbit, the graveyard orbit, and leave it there. Well, right now, folks are so happy with what’s going on that there’s a good chance that the contract is going to be extended, assuming that IntelSat satellite continues to do its job well. 

Pamela Gay [00:18:11] And so based on this, NASA has actually been working on a whole set of technologies to attempt to maintain refuel satellites in orbit. There’s actually a bunch of gear attached to the outside of the International Space Station that they’ve been doing some experiments with refueling attempting to refuel test satellites and things like that. So what does the future hold? They are still bullets that you’re trying to catch, and so it’s never going to be simple to refuel a satellite. But what does the future hold, do you think, for this? 

Fraser Cain [00:18:51] Well, with the International Space Station, this is the robotic refueling mission. It really started to shine about a year ago in March of 2019. And this is a case of Dexter, one of the Canadian robot arms, grabbing satellites that are able to get themselves within grabbing distance of the International Space Station. Again, the ISS is not going to chase stuff down. Yeah, yeah. But if you have a satellite that’s still fairly functional, still has that ability to maneuver itself around, and it can get itself to the ISS, we now have, well, not a fully functional refueling station, but the starts of construction of that gas station on orbit that, well, a lot of folks that I really hope the ISS would be able to do earlier on. And if we can test things at ISS, and if we can get the Deep Space Gateway back on the drawing board for construction, I think it got yanked off last I looked. 

Pamela Gay [00:19:52] It’s off the, it’s off the… 

Fraser Cain [00:19:54] Artemis timeline. 

Pamela Gay [00:19:55] Yeah, it’s off the Artemis timeline, but it hasn’t been canceled. Okay. 

Fraser Cain [00:19:59] So, I mean, if we can get Deep Space Gateway going as a refueling construction station. This means there is no place in orbit between here and the moon that we can’t feasibly direct a spacecraft to and make repairs and refuel it with the potential of getting a human being out there with their fingers and thumbs, doing the things that human beings do next. And with Norport Grumman’s technology, we have the ability to reach things in all those intermediate orbits. Now, where it starts to get trickstery is when we start looking to the future. And, well, what happens if, like, JWST doesn’t open up all the way or something? 

Pamela Gay [00:20:41] Right, right. Yeah, it’s, you know, whenever I do any episode about James Webb, people always want to ask, what if it doesn’t work? And the chances of it not working are disturbingly high. It has, it has dozens of different actuators that all have to move in concert. It has hundreds of points that fold out. And when you think about like this, like a five layer mylar sun shield, all of the the folding out of its main telescopic array, all of the mirrors, etc. It’s tremendously complicated for the whole thing to come together properly. Just imagine if any one of those hinges fails and then the whole thing is non -functional. And it’s out at the Earth Sun L2 Lagrange point, never to be, you know, touched again. 

Fraser Cain [00:21:39] There are over 300 single points of failure. Yeah. We attempt to build spacecraft without single points of failure. It’s a goal. We usually don’t succeed. But to have 300 single points of failure and one of the things that at least a couple of months ago they were working on, I don’t know if they’re still working on it, is it was realized that a whole bunch of the bolts they used in constructing JWST were not the correct bolts. Someone just grabbed the wrong bolts, delivered the wrong bolts. The bolts were not up to spec and they can’t take the JWST apart and replace all the bolts with the correct bolts. So they’re trying to figure out what they can and what they need to actually do. These are the things that we’re dealing with with this particular spacecraft that now holds a dark spot in my heart. 

Pamela Gay [00:22:33] Yeah. Now, I mean, there are no plans to repair James Webb. But the good news is that right now, when the satellite is actually taken to the launch site and it’s bolted up on the top of its upper stage, it uses an industry standard docking ring to essentially clamp on to the top stage of the rocket. And it has ports for refueling. And so they won’t actually refuel up the spacecraft until it’s just about to launch. And so they’ll attach these fuel attachments onto it. They’ll fuel up James Webb and then they’ll disconnect all that. And then the whole thing will fly to space. So in theory, it’s still going to have that docking ring. It’s still going to have these fuel ports on board and they’re all fairly standard. So in theory, if this mission extension vehicle works well for now, maybe we could see a future mission extension vehicle make the journey up to L2 and try to refuel James Webb. But there are no plans. So it’s not impossible. But nobody is planning to do this. And definitely not with people. 

Fraser Cain [00:23:39] And one of the frustrations that I have, one of the many frustrations that I have, just one of them, is JWST was originally slated to launch somewhere around 2011. And when they put this together with these completely standard docking clamps, standard fueling capabilities, the thought was that about the same time JWST ended of life, about 20 years later, they should be able to take a robot up to take care of it. Well, it’s been delayed a lot. And our capacity to go to that particular orbit and accomplish that particular job is still about 20 years off. 

Pamela Gay [00:24:22] Yeah. That’s all I’ve got. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. But then, of course, I mean, everyone talks about Starship. So who knows, maybe there will be Starship will be capable of doing this kind of mission, although we’ve seen now three prototypes get destroyed. 

Fraser Cain [00:24:39] Well, that doesn’t worry me so much as its kind of design is really not so much suited. It’s not designed to attach an arm to it. And when it comes to repairing spacecraft, you really need to be able to grapple on and, well, hug the thing you’re trying to fix, or at least hold on to it so it can’t escape. 

Pamela Gay [00:24:59] I’m sure the Canadians are working on a Starship arm plan. So I think the other really fascinating idea that will move this whole thing forward is just this idea of on orbit refueling. Because right now, all spacecraft are literally launched. Imagine you launch, you know, you get your car, and it’s got the fuel in the fuel tank, and that’s all you will ever have. And when the fuel runs out in the fuel tank, you throw the car out. But in fact, a lot of people have been working on this idea of orbital refueling. The Starship mission to Mars depends on them being able to launch these Starships, be able to refuel them in orbit and be able to send them. So if you can refuel in space, how does that change things? If you can, like, have a spaceship run, you know, do its mission, run out of fuel, go get refilled. 

Fraser Cain [00:25:53] What happens then? Well, it changes the planned obsolescence that we have for so many of these missions. Right now, we take the approach of this self -contained spacecraft has no hot, swappable bits. And when it’s done its job, it dies an almighty fiery death if it was in the right orbit, or it just gets parked if it’s in a different orbit. 

Pamela Gay [00:26:19] Yeah, or risks future space missions. 

Fraser Cain [00:26:22] So this means that when we’re building things like the Landsats, which have mission after mission after mission in the series, when we build the GOES series, these are weather satellites that were up somewhere around whatever number the letter R corresponds to at this point. With these series of missions, instead of planning that as soon as we launch this mission, we’re on to building the next spacecraft, you instead build them and you think about them differently. You think about them with exchangeable bits. So and here I mean pieces, not like memory bits. So that a spacecraft can essentially come up and grab out a console, replace it with a new camera, grab out a console, replace the servos. 

Pamela Gay [00:27:08] And top it up, give it a top up of fuel. Exactly. 

Fraser Cain [00:27:11] And so now instead of planned obsolescence of an entire spacecraft, you simply recognize that some things are going to get better with age. Cameras, cameras are going to get better with age. Some things will wear down. Servos, flywheels, all these spinny bits, they have a hard life. And if you can take those components that are destined to die and take those components that are destined to, well, get improved upon and build them in such a way that you can pop them out and stick in something new, that’s going to save so much money as we just fundamentally change how we interact with our spacecraft. 

Pamela Gay [00:27:52] Yeah, it’s interesting. One Lockheed Martin was developing this program called Aces and it was all about essentially orbital refueling. And so they were working out a system that would put a giant fuel depot in space. And they were willing to pay people to deliver just propellant to the depot. And so suddenly these things turn into commodities where you’re like, oh, it’s worth it’s worth $2 ,000 per kilogram to deliver to deliver hydrogen and oxygen fuel to this propellant depot will pay you if you can do it. And then that that starts to create a lot of downstream opportunity for people who are running smaller companies to be able to develop ways of maybe harvesting some of that from a comet or an asteroid and being able to deliver it. So that whole idea of of just refueling and refurbishment and reuse and accessing the resources from around the solar system is going to really be critical for us to be able to move on to the next stage. That’s when you’ll know. I think that the real space age infrastructure is all starting to come together. 

Fraser Cain [00:29:10] So when you see that and gas stations, it’s an old dream. Yeah. One one of the things that stabs me in the heart every time I think about it is is I’m one of those kids that went to space camp. No one would have ever guessed. I know. No. And and when when I went back in 88 when I was a middle schooler, I remember staring at the plans they had in in the space and rocket center for the future space station freedom. This was before we went to the International Space Station designs, the intermediate mirror step. Yeah. The big one, the big one. And part of it was they actually had a space based. It was a good old fashioned hanger. And the idea was there would be astronauts doing the one thing that astronauts can still do better than any robot. And that’s repair stuff with their dexterous hands. Yeah. And I remember standing there staring at that and talking to one of the adult leaders. These were actually college kids. But when you’re in middle school, they’re really adult. And back then they they would tell us that by the time we were old enough to be astronauts, all this stuff would be built. All of this would be constructed. And instead of being the pioneers, we just be the users. Right. And here I am now. The age of a typical astronaut. We don’t have any of that stuff. I feel gypped. I don’t want my rocket car. I want my space gas station. Exactly. Exactly. That’s when you’ll know. 

Pamela Gay [00:30:51] That’s awesome, Pamela. So do you have any names for us this week? I do. 

Fraser Cain [00:30:56] So we are supported by so many of you who go to our Patreon at patreon .com slash astronomy cast and become members of our community. And we have seen a notable drop in the past couple of months with covid. And we know that a lot of you are hurting. And I just want to say, don’t feel bad. Take care of yourself first. We’re still going to be here on the other side. We’ll find a way to keep going. We always do. But for those of you who are still able, thank you for all that you do to keep us going. So I’d like to say thank you to Jordan Young, Biri Gowin, Ramji Anamatu, Andrew Palestra, Brian Cagle, David Troge, the giant nothing, Laura Kettleson, Robert Palazma, Corey Daval, Paul Jarman, Les Howard, Joss Cunningham, Adam Annis Brown, Emily Patterson, the infinitesimal ripple in space time, Ed Gordon -Dewis and Kajartan Svari. 

Pamela Gay [00:32:06] Thank you. Thank you all for what you do. Thank you, everyone. And we’ll see you all next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to AstronomyCast, a nonprofit resource provided by the Planetary Science Institute, Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay. You can find show notes and transcripts for every episode at AstronomyCast. You can email us at info at AstronomyCast .com, tweet us at AstronomyCast, like us on Facebook and watch us on YouTube. We record our show live on YouTube every Friday at 3 p .m. Eastern, 12 p .m. Pacific or 1900 UTC. Our intro music was provided by David Joseph Wesley. The outro music is by Travis Searle and the show was edited by Suzy Murph. 

Fraser Cain [00:33:02] Marketing is hard, but I’ll tell you a little secret. It doesn’t have to be. Let me point something out. You’re listening to a podcast right now and it’s great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre -produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads. Go to Libsyn ads dot com. That’s L I B S Y N ads dot com today. 

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