> Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the RSGS payload is designed and developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The payload is integrated on the Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) spacecraft, developed by SpaceLogitistics, a Northrop Grumman company, and was launched onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
That's quite a who's who of public-private partnership. It's fascinating to watch these commercial space industries develop in real-time.
Almost all the ‘servicing’ and ‘orbital debris cleanup’ robot-arm sats are funded quite heavily by military end users, because there is really no market for their stated aims and a huge market for the unstated aims - flying up to an adversary’s satellite and messing it up. Open secret in the industry.
> Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the RSGS payload is designed and developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The payload is integrated on the Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) spacecraft, developed by SpaceLogitistics, a Northrop Grumman company, and was launched onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
That's quite a who's who of public-private partnership. It's fascinating to watch these commercial space industries develop in real-time.
TIL DARPA is still around. Kind of thought they got the “doge” treatment
DOGE got DOGE'd itself. It doesn't exist anymore.
Defense doesn’t get DOGE’d, only programs that build up communities do. There’s always budget for more destruction.
Almost all the ‘servicing’ and ‘orbital debris cleanup’ robot-arm sats are funded quite heavily by military end users, because there is really no market for their stated aims and a huge market for the unstated aims - flying up to an adversary’s satellite and messing it up. Open secret in the industry.
As I understand it, the current on-orbit service functions include... orbit manipulations.
Any service functions of existing equipment would depend on charge interface or communications functions that are not exposed or standardized.
It will make a good season to practice kinetic adjustments until the fleets start shipping terminals for Astromech droids.