RSat-P (Repair Satellite-Prototype) is a

microsatellite A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism's genome. ...

built by the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...

(USNA) in

Annapolis, Maryland Annapolis ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Maryland and the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Anne Arundel County. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...

. The small spacecraft is a 3U CubeSat intended to demonstrate capabilities for minor in-orbit repair of a much larger, conventional spacecraft. RSat-P was launched on 16 December 2018 on an

Electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...

rocket as part of NASA's

Educational Launch of Nanosatellites Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) is an initiative created by NASA to attract and retain students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. The program is managed by the Launch Services Program (LSP) at NASA ...

(ELaNa) Mission 19.

Overview

It has been determined that about 1/3 of all commercial spacecraft failures originate on their

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

deployment, wiring, sunshield, or antenna deployment, so RSat-P is set to test the potential of a CubeSat to fix such small-scale large-impact failures. Potential deployments include an RSat embedded in its host spacecraft, where it uses its claws to crawl along the failed spacecraft to diagnose and repair. Alternatively, an RSat could be released from a nearby constellation spacecraft in combination with a propulsive BRICSat unit to reach the failed spacecraft. While the RSat may be limited to diagnostics and minor repairs, more complex servicing would be performed by a large spacecraft called

Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

(RSGS), that is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

). The team includes Edward Hanlon, Benjamin Keegan and Morgan Lange, Jacob Pittman, Gavin Roser and Dakota Wenberg; the adviser is Jin Kang. In 2017, the team was awarded the Secretary of the Navy's Innovation Scholar Award, at a ceremony at

The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...

, for their research project. The first robotic arm prototype was scheduled for a launch in early 2017, but was postponed for December 2018.

Description

RSat-P is a small 3U CubeSat that is part of the Autonomous On-orbit Diagnostic System (AMODS) being developed by the U.S. Naval Academy satellite laboratory to demonstrate diagnostic and repair capabilities by validating some key robotic functions while in orbit.RSat-P (Repair Satellite-Prototype)
Gunter Krebs, ''Gunter's Space Page'', Accessed on 16 December 2018RSat Flight Qualification and Test Results for Manipulable Robotic Appendages Installed on 3U CubeSat Platform
D.L. Wenberg, B.P. Keegan, M.E. Lange, Edward A.S. Hanlon, et al. United States Naval Academy 30th Annual AIAA//USU Conference on Small Satellites 2015 The two robotic arms will be moved through some test patterns to simulate the repair of a damaged spacecraft. The combined mission of an RSat with BRICSat is called "The Modified BRICSat-RSat Space Experiment" (MBSE), which will be launched some time after the validation of the robotic arms on RSat-P. The electric thrusters on BRICSat are called "Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster" (μCAT), developed by the

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

. The robotic arms are made of

3D printed 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

carbon fiber, they have 7 degrees-of-freedom each, are long, and have a total arm-span of . RSat-P has a CMOS camera attached at the center of the body to monitor the accuracy of the arm movements, and there are two more cameras fitted to the claws, enabling the satellite to provide on-demand diagnostic pictures of itself.

Result of in-orbit tests

It was planned that "two robotic arms that will be moved through one or more test patterns to simulate the repair of a damaged spacecraft."

References

{{Orbital launches in 2018 CubeSats United States Naval Academy Spacecraft launched by Electron rockets Spacecraft launched in 2018 Robotic manipulators Telepresence robots Military space program of the United States Satellite servicing missions