Future of Satellite

SpaceX to Launch the Future of Satellite Maintenance Tomorrow

SpaceX is bringing supplies to the ISS for the 10th time, including the highly anticipated Raven module to allow autonomous satellite rendezvous and repairs.

By Jay Bennett

SpaceX is launching its 10th resupply mission to the International Space Station on Saturday at 10:01 a.m. EST, and the Dragon capsule will be carrying some highly anticipated goodies for NASA. (You can see a Dragon spacecraft being retrieved by the ISS's robotic arm above.)

In addition to a lethal pathogen that NASA will cultivate in microgravity, tomorrow's launch will also be carrying the Raven module—an important piece of technology that will be used to test techniques to achieve autonomous rendezvous in space, a critical step toward sending a repair bot up to maintain the hundreds of satellites we have orbiting our planet.

The Falcon 9 rocket will be blasting off from a historic launch pad, Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), which last saw a launch in July 2011 when the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off to deliver supplies to the ISS, the final mission of the Space Shuttle program. LC-39A was the launchpad for 12 Atlas V launches and 80 Space Shuttle launches, and tomorrow's Falcon 9 launch will be the first time a non-NASA launch vehicle lights up the historic pad.

The Raven module includes three optical instruments, which has lead the team that built it to start calling it the three-eyed Raven, a nod to Game of Thrones that is all the more apt because the Raven will be riding on a Dragon spacecraft. Data acquired by the three-eyed Raven will be crucial to the operations of the future Restore-L satellite—a robotic spacecraft that will service and repair other satellites in orbit.


The Raven technology module, prelaunch.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Gunn

Restore-L is slated for launch in the 2020s, but before it can spruce up other aging sats, it needs to know what they look like. The robotic repair satellite will be tasked with flying up to other satellites, matching their velocity, and refueling and repairing them so the sats can continue to work into the future—and so we don't need to launch more metal into orbit to continue old satellites' jobs.

"Two spacecraft autonomously rendezvousing is crucial for many future NASA missions and Raven is maturing this never-before-attempted technology," said Ben Reed, deputy division director of NASA's Satellite Servicing Projects Division, in a press release.

To make matters even more difficult, more than 99 percent of all satellites were not designed for rendezvous or servicing. That means there will be no obvious markings or brackets to make it easier to secure the satellite for servicing or find the correct part for maintenance. Restore-L will have to use an advanced machine vision system, and because of the delay in communications with a satellite in orbit, it will be all on its own, as technicians on the ground cannot possibly issue commands quick enough for Restore-L to respond. A servicing satellite will need to be entirely autonomous, and the sensors and machine imaging algorithms being tested on Raven will allow Restore-L to fly solo.

Raven, about the size of a carry-on piece of luggage, will be mounted to the ISS after it arrives so it can observe satellites that fly nearby. After collecting data for two years, NASA should be closer to launching Restore-L, which will first target the Earth-observing satellite Landsat 7 for refueling. Moving forward, NASA hope to populate the skies with little mechanics bots, automatically keeping our space infrastructure in tip-top shape.