NASA has successfully concluded a remotely controlled test of new technologies that would empower future space robots to transfer hazardous oxidizer a type of propellant into the tanks of satellites in space today.

Concurrently on the ground, NASA is incorporating results from this test and the Robotic Refueling Mission on the International Space Station to prepare for an upcoming ground-based test of a full-sized robotic servicer system that will perform tasks on a mock satellite client.

Collectively, these efforts are part of an ongoing and aggressive technology development campaign to equip robots and humans with the tools and capabilities needed for spacecraft maintenance and repair, the assembly of large space telescopes, and extended human exploration.

Technologies to Help Satellites That Help Earth

The Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., checked another critical milestone off their list with the completion of their Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer Test (RROxiTT) in February 2014.

"This is the first time that anyone has tested this type of technology, and we've proven that it works. It's ready for the next step to flight," says Frank Cepollina, veteran leader of the five servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope and the associate director of SSCO.

"RROxiTT gives NASA, and the satellite community at large, confidence that advanced satellite refueling and maintenance technologies aren't a wild dream of the future," says Cepollina. "They're being built and tested today and the capabilities that they can unlock can become a reality."

Since 2009, SSCO has been investigating human and robotic satellite servicing while developing the technologies necessary to bring on-orbit spacecraft inspection, repair, refueling, component replacement and assembly capabilities to space.

Taking lessons learned from the successful Robotic Refueling Mission, the SSCO team devised the ground-based RROxiTT to test how robots can transfer hazardous oxidizer, at flight-like pressures and flow rates, through the propellant valve and into the mock tank of a satellite.

While this capability could be applied to spacecraft in multiple orbits, SSCO focused RROxiTT specifically on technologies that could help satellites traveling the busy space highway of geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO.

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NASA tests new robotic refueling technologies