Satellite Technology of the Year: Northrop Grumman and the Future of In-Orbit Satellite Servicing
In the same week that Northrop Grumman won the 2020 Satellite Technology of the Year (STOTY) award for its pioneering work with Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1), the company successfully docked MEV-2 to the Intelsat 10-02 satellite to deliver life-extension services. However, unlike MEV-1, which docked above the Geostationary Orbit (GEO) before moving IS-901 back into service, MEV-2 docked with IS-10-02 directly in its operational GEO orbital location.
In the space of 14 months, Northrop Grumman has made in-orbit satellite servicing a commercial reality, and not just an exciting concept of the future. It is a well-deserved winner of our STOTY award.
In this interview, Tom Wilson, vice president and general manager for Northrop Grumman and president of SpaceLogistics LLC, and Joe Anderson, senior director of Business Development for Northrop Grumman and vice president of SpaceLogistics, talk about winning this award, look back on the successful February 2020 mission, and share what is next for Northrop Grumman as it looks to bring more cutting-edge services to satellites in orbit.
VIA SATELLITE: Congratulations to Northrop Grumman for winning our Satellite Technology of the Year Award. What does it mean to be recognized for a technology achievement like this?
Wilson: We are thankful and honored to receive this award, it means a lot to us. It hasn’t been an easy path to success by any means. It took us about a decade from the beginnings of this idea to gain acceptance of our peers and our customers and make this vision into a reality. To see it come to fruition with not just one docking, but two dockings, is very exciting. We think the future is very promising in this area. This acknowledgment and the fact that it comes from our industry peers’ votes, makes this achievement very rewarding.
Anderson: This mission will stick with everyone that worked on this as one of the defining moments of their careers. It is certainly one of mine. It is the moment we really enabled Space 2.0. This award recognizes in advance, that history will speak about a time before there was satellite servicing, and a time after there was satellite servicing. This technology and these two docking events will define that transition. It is really an important thing for us to have this recognition.
VIA SATELLITE: Given the technical complexity of in-orbit servicing, did the challenges of the pandemic make your jobs even more difficult, as this was the first time you were proving the technology?
Wilson: The good news is that MEV-1, which we docked with Intelsat 901, was done February last year just before the pandemic took hold and shut everything down. We were able to get the rendezvous and docking before that impacted us. But, on MEV-2, the new working environment with COVID certainly had an impact on our assembly and test campaign. We did have a launch delay for a short time in French Guiana. Our team persevered and got through it, and we were able to culminate with a successful docking.
VIA SATELLITE: How do you now see the market for in-orbit satellite servicing? Now that you have proved the technology, what do you see as the deal flow for NGC going forward?
Anderson: This market is rapidly emerging and evolving. As we forecast, it has been a bit of the “build it, and they will come” type of market. We knew this for two reasons. First, when we were speaking with customers year after year, they would say “This is three to four years out, I can’t tell you what our needs will be. But, if you were there today, I have a need for it.” They would say they couldn’t commit to something three to four years in the future. Because we heard that year after year, we knew for sure it was a need, that was our first indication.
Second, it just makes economic sense to use your assets to their full potential. But because of the risk-averse nature of our industry, it really prevented customers from saying “Yes” to an unproven technology. Now that is changing very rapidly. We have now been successful twice. With MEV-2, we docked to an operational satellite and they never lost service during the docking. We have really overcome that hurdle with the technology.
Our next generation life extension systems, known as Mission Extension Pods, are scheduled to launch in 2024. We will be able to install five of those per year. Our manifest is currently booked into 2026 with many customer opportunities identified beyond, which we are looking to close. We also see governments taking great interest in the possibility of what these technologies can enable, including increased resiliency of existing on-orbit assets. We expect to see deals with government customers going beyond studies and demonstrations, to real servicing missions in the near future.
VIA SATELLITE: How many deals to expect to sign in the rest of this year?
Wilson: We are planning on signing a handful of deals this year. We have also started to do work with the U.S. government in this area.
VIA SATELLITE: What is the revenue potential here? Is it potentially a lucrative market for NGC?
Wilson: From a Northrop Grumman perspective, we have been the solet ivestor in SpaceLogistics and MEVs over>
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