In-space Refueling Demonstration Project
As of March 2011, Intelsat has agreed to purchase one-half of the 2,000 kilograms (4,400 lb) propellant payload that an MDA Corporation spacecraft satellite-servicing demonstration project would take to geostationary orbit. Catching up in orbit with four or five Intelsat communication satellites, a fuel load of 200 kilograms (440 lb) of fuel delivered to each satellite would add somewhere between two and four years of additional service life. A near-end-of-life Intelsat satellite will be moved to a graveyard orbit 200 to 300 kilometres (120–190 mi) above the geostationary belt where the refueling will be done, "without consequence" to the Intelsat business.
As of March 2010, the business model was still evolving. MDA "could ask customers to pay per kilogram of fuel successfully added to satellite, with the per-kilogram price being a function of the additional revenue the operator can expect to generate from the spacecraft’s extended operational life."
The plan is that the fuel-depot vehicle would maneuver to several satellites, dock at the target satellite’s apogee-kick motor, remove a small part of the target spacecraft’s thermal protection blanket, connect to a fuel-pressure line and deliver the propellant. "MDA officials estimate the docking maneuver would take the communications satellite out of service for about 20 minutes."
Read more about this topic: Intelsat
Famous quotes containing the word project:
“Indigenous to Minnesota, and almost completely ignored by its people, are the stark, unornamented, functional clusters of concrete—Minnesota’s grain elevators. These may be said to express unconsciously all the principles of modernism, being built for use only, with little regard for the tenets of esthetic design.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)