In April, Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense technology company with a decades-long list of historic missions, completed another space first—attaching an unmanned vehicle to a still-functioning 17-year-old communications satellite that was running out of fuel while orbiting Earth at 7,000 miles per hour. It marked the second time the company has docked with commercial spacecraft in orbit. The company also made history in February 2020 when it successfully docked its first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) to an inactive communications satellite in what’s called the graveyard orbit, where dying satellites are dispatched to avoid colliding with other satellties.
In the past, owners of dying satellites in geostationary (GEO) orbit only had one option. They would have to use the last of the satellite’s fuel to navigate it to the graveyard orbit to run out the course of its life.
But these two historic missions confirmed Northrop Grumman’s expertise in extending a satellite’s life for another three, five, or even ten years by deploying an MEV to serve as the most sophisticated jet pack in the universe.
For decades, this was considered a far-fetched and even dangerous idea. A minor crash could hurl thousands of pieces of debris through an area where the world’s most critical space infrastructure is deployed. In zero gravity, an inch-long piece of metal becomes a deadly missile, traveling thousands of miles per hour, that can slice through a satellite—not to mention the International Space Station or other manned spacecraft—in a split second.
Yet with Northrop Grumman’s technology, navigating unmanned vehicles in orbit as they redezvous and dock with satellites that are running low on fuel is now possible, saving their owners millions of dollars—and recapitalizing their original investment—by extending the life of expensive satellites rather than relegating them to the interstellar trash heap. And with roughly 7,000 satellites in orbit, there’s no shortage of potential customers. SpaceLogistics LLC, the Northrop Grumman company behind these missions, leads the on-orbit servicing industry—one critical for maintaining interstellar infrastructure into the future for a variety of customers.
“With these dockings, we created an entirely new market in orbit," Tom Wilson, vice president of strategic space systems at Northrop Grumman and president of SpaceLogistics, said in a recent webinar. “And these rendezvous and docking capabilities will ultimately enable entirely new classes of missions.”
The View from Space
The company is taking this cutting-edge idea even further with its Mission Robotic Vehicles (MRVs) and Mission Extension Pods (MEPs). These unmanned spacecraft will attach to, provide extra fuel for, and, eventually, maintain and repair commercial and government satellites while they continue to operate in orbit.
Missions to space like this are complex and require extreme precision, and typically only mission personnel in the control rooms back on Earth have a good view of what’s happening. But now, for the first time, Northrop Grumman is inviting everyone to witness firsthand what in-orbit servicing looks like from space, via the company’s new augmented reality experience, Portals to Space. Once viewers step inside, they can watch MRV and MEP carry out rescue missions taking place thousands of miles from home. In an age when notable milestones in space exploration often pass without much explanation, seeing this action up close through the AR experience may be the best way to understand just how remarkable these missions truly are.
The Portals to Space experience offers an unprecedented window into Northrop Grumman—and how the company is building on its decades of experience to innovate for the years ahead.
Pioneering Space from the Beginning
Whether it has been in civil, commercial, or military realms, Northrop Grumman has been a leader in pioneering space missions from the beginning. In the 1950s, when the U.S. and Russia began competing against each other to reach the stars, Northrop Grumman was one of NASA’s main contractors. In fact, Pioneer 1, the first U.S. satellite launched into orbit, in 1958, was developed by companies that are now part of Northrop Grumman.
Today, Northrop Grumman continues to lead the way in offering critical support to NASA. In 2011, when the space shuttle program was retired, the company stepped in to offer resupply missions to the International Space Station. Under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, which began in 2008, Northrop Grumman developed and operated the Cygnus spacecraft, which is the foundation for the company’s expertise in rendezvous and proximity operations in space. Cygnus missions have been launched atop the company’s Antares rocket approximately twice a year since 2013. The Cygnus delivers critical commodities such as food, supplies, and materials for scientific experiments to the space station crew. Then, before it leaves, it’s packed with trash, which safely burns up when the vehicle reenters Earth’s atmosphere.
Many of the company’s most innovative missions, however, are highly sensitive government or military contracts that cannot be discussed publicly. A few of the examples that can be shared, however, include its work in providing protected miltiary satellite communications payloads for senior U.S. leaders, developing missile warning satellites and missile defense systems and, in 2019, working with DARPA to develop a spacecraft for the R3D2 program, completing the construction of the satellite, from concept to launch, in 20 months—a previously unheard of timeline for a satellite.
But in all areas, from building and launching satellites into orbit, to defending our nation from space and in space, to supplying the International Space Station, Northrop Grumman has laid the groundwork for a legacy of innovation in space. Now that work continues with its suite of in-orbit servicing vehicles, which will breathe new life into dying satellites.
But even those missions are only a portion of the exciting work ahead.
Forging the Future of Space
Recently, the latest of the Landsat-9 observation satellites, one of four Landsat satellites designed and built by Northrop Grumman and its legacy companies, was launched into space. As part of a joint project between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, the satellite will take photos of Earth’s surface for a decade or more, doing everything from mapping wildfires in Alaska to assessing algae blooms in Florida to tracking gypsy moth invasions in Ohio.
NASA also hopes to go back to the moon as early as 2024, and Northrop Grumman will play a major role in that mission, providing the solid rocket boosters for the Space Launch System, the abort motor for the Orion spacecraft, and a home for lunar-orbiting astronauts—bringing the company full circle in its capabilities.
And then there are the in-orbit servicing vehicles themselves, which are poised to revolutionize the satellite industry by keeping spacecraft in orbit longer. The MRV services satellites through a robotic-arm package built in conjunction with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The smaller MEP, shuttled to a satellite by the larger MRV, adds a critical additional propulsion source that will remain with the repaired satellite. Together they offer a glimpse at just how far space technology has come in a few short years, and a reminder of how important satellite infrastructure is to modern life.
“We are leading the market,” says Wilson, “we proved we can safely perform rendezvous, proximity operations and docking with client satellites that were not designed to be serviced. Now we are starting our second generation systems that add robotic capability to enable a whole new mission domain for commercial space, and also for the government.”
The future of space exploration depends on a pioneering spirit, but it depends even more on infrastructure that enables these missions to go off without a hitch. Only a few companies have been pushing the boundaries of stellar innovation since the dawn of the Space Age, and none more consistently than Northrop Grumman.
“When people think of Northrop Grumman, they often think about complex, hard-to-solve problems,” says Wilson. “What’s unique about us is that while we can carry out these complex missions, we have a really balanced portfolio that allows us to do all types of missions in fast, innovative, and affordable ways.”
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If you want to see the future of space, check out Portals to Space, Northrop Grumman’s out-of-this-world AR experience showcasing how the company’s unmanned vehicles perform rescue missions on dying satellites. Head over to portalstospace.com on your mobile device or computer.
