Aging, expensive satellites in distant orbit may get a new lease on life with the deployment of demonstration technologies aboard a rocket launched July 21 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 carried a payload decades in the making — a Swiss Army knife of a servicing tool whose first job may be to attach auxiliary “jet packs” of fuel to keep satellites flying after their built-in supply runs out. Three of these mission extension pods (MEPs) were part of the Falcon 9 payload, though the satellites getting them haven’t been identified.
One thing for sure is that the new tool will work in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, where satellites generally fly at a fixed point above the equator and rotate with the Earth. Known as the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) system, the tool was developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
RSGS was mated with a carrier or bus called the Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) by the carrier’s developer, commercial partner SpaceLogistics and parent company Northrop Grumman.
Many newer GEO satellites will be designed with standard interfaces so service vehicles can easily connect to them. MRV is equipped for the tougher task of servicing a selection of satellites among the 500 to 600 that are active now in GEO, most of them built to be launched and abandoned at the end of their design life.
It will take about a year for the new satellites to maneuver from an initial elliptical drop-off orbit into their operational equatorial orbit.
The MRV deployment promises to usher in a new era of space operations, “paving the way,” DARPA said in a news release, “for a new commercial market that will enhance the resilience and sustainability of both commercial and U.S. government space assets.”
A commercial market appears most promising in GEO because at lower orbits, where constellations can number in the thousands of satellites, it’s often seen as cheaper to replace one rather than repairing it. What’s more, satellites in GEO — used for communications, weather tracking and national security — can cost billions of dollars because each is typically custom-built.
On-orbit satellite servicing can include updates, repair, refueling and disposal.
“By partnering with industry from the start, we ensure the capability transitions into a sustainable, commercially viable service,” said James Shoemaker, RSGS program manager with DARPA. “This partnership creates a new market and allows the cost of maintaining this infrastructure to be shared, benefiting both the government and the entire space industry.”
DARPA spells out the features of the MRV in its news release.
They include dual robotic manipulator arms, built with seven high-strength, high-performance joints and a specialized tool drive. Each arm can be affixed simultaneously with a number of interchangeable satellite-servicing tools. These will be used to install the MEPs. The device also includes a suite of modular tools, sensors, advanced lighting for delicate mechanical interventions, and autonomous controls running flight-safe software to execute close-proximity operations safely.
DARPA plans to transfer the RSGS program to the U.S. Space Force. Northrop Grumman owns the MRV now in orbit and SpaceLogistics can use it to service commercial customers, including installation of private MEPs. These fuel pods can extend by six to eight years the operational life of a GEO satellite designed for 10 to 15 years.
The Chinese Communist Party launched a satellite with a robotic arm into GEO in 2016. Another, in 2022, moved a defunct navigation satellite into graveyard orbit before returning to its geosynchronous path. The CCP also launched a GEO refueling mission in January 2025.
In 2024 testimony before Congress, Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, chief of U.S. Space Command, warned about what “China and Russia are doing, particularly building with their counter-space weapons, they’re moving breathtakingly fast.” Service satellites described as having peaceful uses can serve a dual use as space weaponry, U.S. space defense leaders have said.
The MRV is “arguably the most advanced servicing satellite ever launched,” the technology website Ars Technica reported. The website noted that the system evolved from earlier servicing programs, including DARPA’s work dating to 2007 on a one-armed orbital device and a Northrop Grumman project from 2019 known as the Mission Extension Vehicle.
The MRV represents a significant advancement in the technology, Shoemaker told Ars Technica: “It’s general-purpose, high-dexterity robotics.”