So we have a perfectly good military communications satellite stranded in the wrong orbit. If we were a truly space-faring nation, we’d send something up to give it a tow. In a few years, with things like ACES, we’ll be able to.
4 thoughts on “MUOS Failure”
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When the same thing happened to AEHF-1 about 6 years ago, they were able to raise the orbit using on board ion thrusters. It took about a year to reach the final orbit. From what I’ve read, MUOS doesn’t have those ion thrusters. It does have small engines designed for station-keeping. They may be able to eventually raise the orbit using those thrusters but they weren’t designed for such long burns.
There’s a more informative article at Spaceflight Now, Note in particular,
“…it appears the satellite has performed some orbit-raising in recent days, albeit tiny compared to large-scale maneuvers. The Navy has not confirmed any movements, but hobbyists keeping tabs on the stricken satellite have seen the tell-tale signs.”
BOTE, the 17-minute change in passage time corresponds to 400 nm of perigee raising with the small thrusters, if that’s what they are doing. I’m certain they’d rather have a tow truck, but they are making do with what they’ve got.
Rand,
I hadn’t thought of the idea of using an ACES stage with some sort of capture mechanism on it as a way of reboosting a spacecraft like this that failed to reach GEO on its own. It’s possible, though likely an expensive way of solving the problem (without large amounts of applied cleverness). That said, it could do the job, and I even know a company that does occasional ACES-related work *and* capture robotics.
More likely though, this seems like a good fit for life extension tugs such as those envisioned by Dennis Wingo over the years and the Orbital ATK Mission Extension Vehicle (formerly part of their ViviSat JV). Outright strandings like this don’t happen too often, but when they do, having a tug option (whether converted upper stage or SEP tug) that could be dispatched would be really nice.
It’s probably too late to do much about this particular spacecraft (hopefully I’m wrong), but also hopefully the next time this happens, there will be a solution instead of a “man I wish someone had got something flying by now”.
~Jon
Interesting choice for a story source…