BELTSVILLE, MD . – ViviSat, the leading provider of in-orbit servicing, has opened the ATK Robotic Rendezvous and Proximity (RPO) testing facility to ViviSat clients at ATK’s Space Systems Division headquarters in Beltsville, MD. Tours of the facility for ViviSat clients began during the Satellite 2013 Conference that was held March 18-21^st in Washington, D.C.

The recently opened RPO facility allows ViviSat and one of its parent companies, ATK, to demonstrate and verify critical enabling technologies for today’s more complicated space missions. The lab uses state of the art robotic and air-bearing testbeds to simulate satellite motion and facilitate hardware and software development and validation.

The development of technology for controlled approach and docking between spacecraft supports ViviSat’s Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV). The MEV, manufactured by ATK, is designed to dock with the orbiting satellite and serve as the propulsion and attitude control systems. This enables mission extension for satellites which have run out of maneuvering fuel yet still have healthy payload and power systems.

The ATK Space Systems Division completed two prototype docking mechanisms that will reinforce the MEV’s ongoing development. These prototypes demonstrate servicing capabilities to potential clients and will be used to validate contact dynamics and docking performance in the ATK RPO lab. ATK also recently completed initial testing of closed loop proximity operations, demonstrating the ability to track a simulated host satellite using a prototype visual sensor suite.

“The ATK Robotic RPO Lab demonstrates a substantial investment in retiring risk for ViviSat and its clients. The capability currently demonstrated is the first step in our plans to perform full six degree of freedom docking validation and qualification,” said Tom Wilson, Vice President and General Manager of ATK Space Systems Division.

“We demonstrated this closed loop capability to several clients and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. They see these developments as further validation that ViviSat is making key qualification milestones and demonstrating real capabilities to provide in-orbit servicing,” said Bryan McGuirk, Chief Operating Officer of ViviSat.

Further information about ViviSat can be found at the company’s website, http://www.vivisat.com

Certain information discussed in this press release constitutes forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  Although ATK and U.S. Space believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, they can give no assurance that their expectations will be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to certain risks, trends, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Among these factors are: technical challenges associated with the development and performance of advanced space technologies and services, and assumptions regarding the development of commercial and governmental markets for in-orbit mission extension and operations protection. Neither ATK nor U.S. Space undertakes any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. For further information on factors that could impact ATK, and statements contained herein, please refer to ATK’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

#        #        #

ABOUT U.S. SPACE

U.S. Space LLC is a U.S.-owned provider of dedicated, commercial space solutions. The company was established in January 2009 as a U.S.-owned provider of satellite solutions with a unique model combining the best commercial and government practices. The company, which is run by a small group of highly respected former military and corporate leaders, now offers a variety of dedicated space solutions to serve the nation’s interests. More information on the company is available at www.usspacellc.com.

ABOUT ATK

ATK is an aerospace, defense, and commercial products company with operations in 21 states, Puerto Rico, and internationally.  News and information can be found on the Internet at www.atk.com.

Satellite life extension continues to hold both revolutionary promise and disruptive menace for the satellite and space industry. The useful lifetime of geosynchronous orbit satellites averages about fifteen years – a limit primarily imposed by the exhaustion of propellant aboard. The propellant is needed for “station-keeping,” which means maintaining the satellite in its orbital slot and in-orbit orientation, or attitude, so that its antennae and solar panels are properly pointed. When the propellant is nearly exhausted, the satellite reaches the end of its active life and must be moved to a “graveyard” orbital slot, even though the satellite’s other systems and payload are often in working order.

The fifteen-year replacement cycle drives the satellite industry; from the capital expenditure cycles of satellite operators, the financing they seek for those expenditures, to the resulting order books of satellite manufacturers and launch service providers. Low Earth Orbit satellites may have even shorter life spans, due to the increased atmospheric drag and friction to which they are subject.

Since last year, a hardy band of commercial operators have continued to make headway in reaching for this industry grail and rendering it a tangible reality. NASA and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) “Phoenix” program have joined the private sector players in attempting to develop robotic vehicles to rendezvous and dock with and revive dead or dying satellites.

Current satellite life extension proposals come in two principal flavors, both involving rendezvous and docking with an in-orbit satellite nearing the end of its planned lifespan by a robot vehicle launched for this purpose. The robotic satellite life extension vehicles will, in some conceptions, remain attached to the satellite and become a new power and booster module, fueled by new consumables ferried into space within the robot life extender. In other conceptions, the robotic vehicle rendezvous and docks with the in-orbit satellite, refuels it and then disengages from the satellite. The advantage of this second type of mission profile is that, while in some views more technically complex, it allows theoretically for a robot life extender to be sent on a mission to several dying satellites, docking with and refueling one after the other, and allowing the cost of the mission to be amortized among the satellites serviced, or even among more than one satellite operator. Nor is refueling a satellite for in-orbit attitude control and station-keeping the only possible satellite life extension technology; other modular components of orbiting satellites could theoretically be replaced – even payload components.

These technologies will not make satellites immortal; most estimates are that up to five years could be added to the average satellite’s useful life, extending that lifespan by a third. All proposals would require buy-in by prime satellite manufacturers, because serviceable satellites would have to be designed with docking ports, fuel access and other modular components accessible, removable and replaceable by the robot servicer. That, in turn, will probably require pressure by the satellite operators, the manufacturers’ customers. In an already small market of thin margins, in which 20 to 25 large geosynchronous satellites ordered per year is the norm, satellite life extension technology, if successful, would be enormously disruptive to the manufacturers’ existing business model. Of course, that model might change, and not only would the robots servicers themselves have to be manufactured, but longer-lived satellites with modular, replaceable components might lead to new demand and increased orders.

In any event, satellite life extension is moving from “pie-in-the-sky” territory to reality. McDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, Inc. and Space Systems Loral, which MDA purchased in November; Intelsat General Corporation, in charge of Intelsat’s “hosted payload” initiative; and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have all been awarded DARPA “Phoenix” contracts, intended to develop technologies and an unmanned spacecraft to harvest components from dead satellites, dispose of the detritus, and revive dying satellites. Another company, Vivisat, a joint venture of U.S. Space and ATK, is developing plans for a “Mission Extension Vehicle,” capable of docking with an in-orbit satellite and serving as a supplemental propulsion system. How close is satellite life extension to reality, and what would be the effects on industry if it came to pass?

http://www.satellitetoday.com/via/dollarsandsense/40639.html

“Life extension is the founding mission for the MEV. However, we have an increasing interest by customers and the scientific community in our unique agility and the large Space, Weight and Power (SWAP) that we can accommodate,” said Bryan McGuirk, Chief Operating Officer of ViviSat.

“The MEV can host payloads greater than 200kg and accommodate power demands greater than 2kW. The differentiating feature of the MEV capability versus most other GEO Commsat hosts is the ability to be temporarily located to any orbital slot, or multiple slots, as arranged for by the payload provider. Furthermore, there is no constraint on pointing or slewing like most other GEO hosts,” said Joe Anderson, Chief Engineer and Director of MEV Services at ATK.

“Hosted payloads can actually perform as the primary mission during the first several years of life of the MEV and then the MEV will revert to its original mission of life extension. This combination of prime mission flexibility, orbit location agility and large SWAP opens up a new market that cannot be met by typical GEO Commsats,” said retired Maj. Gen. Craig Weston, CEO of ViviSat.

http://www.satnews.com/story.php?number=405750342

BELTSVILLE, Md.– ATK’s investment in its 15-month-old Robotic Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) Lab shows the company is serious about succeeding in the nascent market of satellite servicing, according to a company executive.

Defense Daily yesterday toured the approximately 3,600 square foot facility and caught a demonstration. ATK currently uses its RPO Lab for in-house research and development as it seeks its first customer for its ViviSat Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV). ATK representatives used two large, movable robots to demonstrate how the company tests its sensors and mechanisms to ensure that a satellite and the MEV could safely and properly dock together in space. ViviSat is a joint venture of ATK and U.S. Space LLC.

ATK spokeswoman Vicki Cox yesterday described satellite servicing as refueling, mission extension and harvesting in one form or another. Cox said companies and the U.S. government are exploring different approaches to satellite servicing, whether it is assisting satellites that run out of fuel, repairing satellites or harvesting: taking components from one satellite for use on another.

ATK also uses the RPO Lab to test software, called Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC), that Jim Armor, ATK vice president of strategy and business development for spacecraft systems and services, described as the brains of the operations. Armor said the RPO Lab is a “robust system” that a number of potential clients have expressed interest in using.

The purpose of the RPO Lab could be summarized as risk management and mission assurance.

“I’m talking really tough customers that know their business and if we can’t convince them that we have done our homework…they’re probably not going to buy from us,” Armor said yesterday. “This is a tough business and this is what is necessary to compete in this business, frankly.”

Armor would not specify how much it cost to build the RPO Lab, nor the annual cost to operate the facility, but Armor said the company has invested substantially in the satellite servicing market area, including the facility, because it believes it’s a viable market. ATK Spacecraft Systems Engineer Jeff Braden said the Lab uses about five to 10 employees regularly, but fluctuates depending on what the company is working on. Armor said the company is in the process of hiring 25 people to bolster the Lab’s capabilities.

ATK is not the only organization with a RPO Lab. Braden said the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has one in Washington and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in nearby Greenbelt, Md., also has one. Braden said one advantage of NRL’s facility is its bigger size, but ATK’s facility allows for air-bearing platform testing and dual moving robots, a feature he said neither NASA nor NRL’s facilities have. Braden said NASA has expressed interest in using ATK’s facility when it needs two moving robots instead of one.

ATK’s space systems group in Beltsville produces products and services including integrated satellite bus systems, multidisciplinary engineering services and integrated thermal control systems. Armor said the Beltsville campus was the only location considered for the RPO Lab as it hosts the company’s satellite production and is near NASA Goddard.

Story here

BELTSVILLE, Md. — ATK is launching an effort to secure more small satellite prime contractor roles as the Defense Department starts to emphasize smaller, more affordable satellites, according to a company official.

ATK Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for Space Systems Division Jim Armor told Defense Daily last week the company’s long history producing satellite components and parts, as well as providing systems engineering and discipline engineering like mechanical, thermal, guidance navigation and control software puts ATK in a great position to gain more lucrative prime contractor deals.

“We really feel like we know the business,” Armor said at ATK’s space systems headquarters here. “I think as Air Force Space and Missile Command (AFSMC) is also looking at smaller Global Positioning System (GPS), smaller missile warning satellites, the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), we intend to compete robustly for those opportunities.”

ATK announced in July an expanded product line of smaller satellites: A100, A200, A500 and A700 with elevated platforms of A150, A250 and A550 providing more payload weight capability and available power. A100 is the smallest, capable of lasting one to five years while carrying a payload weighing up to 15 kg. A700 is the most heavy duty, capable of lasting five to 15 years while carrying a payload weighing up to 1,700 kg.

ATK is also teaming with U.S. Space LLC to offer both satellite operators and governments its ViviSat Missile Extension Vehicle (MEV), an 1,800 kg, A700-class small satellite that connects to existing satellites like a “jetpack” and can perform functions like refueling. Armor said the MEV is as large as ATK can get, with its line of satellite buses going down to as small as 50 kg. Armor said ATK can’t develop larger satellites because they are too big for the company’s facilities and are extremely complicated.

In addition to budgetary constraints driving demand for smaller satellites, Armor told Defense Daily in August technology has increased “by leaps and bounds” over the years to the point where companies can put more capability in smaller packages more affordably.

Armor also said while ATK wasn’t the prime contractor for the TACSAT-3 or Operationally Responsive Space-1 (ORS-1) military reconnaissance spacecraft it was technically the systems integrator for those. Armor said ATK built the ORS-1 bus, from start to delivery, in 17 months (Defense Daily, Aug. 2). TACSAT-3 and ORS-1 are A200 class satellites.

“The community pretty much knows our capabilities there,” Armor said.

ATK is also responsible for satellite buses on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite (A200 class), the Time History of Events and Macroscale Substorms (THEMIS) weather satellite (A100 class) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Phoenix satellite harvesting satellite bus (A500 class).

Story here

SatMagazine:
Will [the new ATK satellite buses] be amenable to in-orbit servicing and/or capture for repair and refueling?

Jim Armor:
We are highly predisposed to in-orbit servicing and ready to include those features, but most customer missions in low earth orbit or beyond geostationary are not yet amenable to it. On the other hand, we believe that satellite servicing is an important new market, whether it involves life extension, satellite repair, in-orbit refueling or spacecraft repurposing.

Our ATK A700 series, the largest mission class, is the foundation of the ViviSat Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV), a significant new satellite servicing spacecraft capable of docking with a client satellite and providing an alternative attitude control and propulsion system for satellites out of fuel but with functioning payloads.

The MEV was introduced in 2011 when ATK and its partner, U.S. Space LLC, launched ViviSat LLC, the first U.S. based company to offer satellite life extension services to commercial and government geosynchronous satellite operators. Through ATK’s long, successful history with Hubble repair missions and ongoing spacecraft servicing work at NASA/GSFC, and now as part of the DARPA Phoenix program repurposing a satellite in orbit, we have laid the groundwork for this game changing technology and believe the commercial market is ready.

Complete article: here

NEW YORK — A young spaceflight company is building what it hopes will be the ultimate space handyman, a combination repair droid and orbital gas station to serve ailing satellites around Earth.

The company, called ViviSat, is planning to launch a fleet of specially built spacecraft that will be able to attach to other vehicles in Earth orbit that need a pick-me-up.

“We call them Mission Extension Vehicles,” ViviSat chief operating officer Bryan McGuirk said Nov. 15 at the 2012 Satellite and Content Delivery Conference and Expo here. “Our job will be to dock with commercial satellites to extend their lives.”

ViviSat initially plans to launch two Mission Extension Vehicles, or MEVs, but hopes to eventually expand the fleet to at least 10 craft. The spacecraft are being built by ATK, the company that made the solid rocket motors for NASA’s now-retired space shuttles.

ViviSat hopes to become the first company to offer such a satellite refurbishment service.

Currently, when communications satellites and other Earth-orbiting spacecraft run out of fuel, they are either sent up into a graveyard-like parking orbit, or de-orbited to destruct in Earth’s atmosphere — or worse, left where they are to become space junk, posing a risk to living satellites. Yet aside from running out of fuel, the spacecraft are often still functioning.

“There is a demand for new solutions that can deal with the majority of satellites that can go to end of life with all their subsystems working,” McGuirk said. “It is in essence a wasted opportunity for those operators to have to send them to deep space.”

A visit from a ViviSat MEV could extend the life of a satellite by up to 10 years — typically three to five years — McGuirk said. The handyman satellites could also redeploy spacecraft, or position them in new orbits.

“We don’t see a tailing off of opportunity,” he said. “There are a huge number of satellites, many hundreds, in [geosynchronous orbit around Earth] today. There are a substantial number of satellites out there coming to retirement that would be candidates. There is a long-lasting opportunity for us to solve problems in the market.”

The project could create a “body shop in the sky,” said Lou Zacharilla, director of development for the Society of Satellite Professionals International, a satellite industry group. “I think it’s an out-there, forward-thinking venture.”

Many in the industry are curious to see whether ViviSat’s business takes off.

“I think it’s a creative idea,” said Arnold Friedman, senior vice president of marketing and sales at the satellite company Space Systems/Loral. “There are pros and cons. We’ll see what happens.”

Even though ViviSat hasn’t nailed down a launch date for its first MEVs, McGuirk said the company has dozens of conversations ongoing with potential customers.

“There’s a lot of interest,” McGuirk told SPACE.com. At first, many doubted that ViviSat’s vision was achievable, but the technology involved is “nothing Earth-shattering,” he said, and should not be beyond the company’s abilities.

Such a venture could also prove a boon for the problem of space junk, which includes all the spent rocket stages and defunct satellites orbiting Earth that are at risk of colliding with working vehicles.

While McGuirk said cleaning up orbital debris isn’t currently part of the company’s business model, the issue could be a motivating factor for satellite operators to hire ViviSat to reduce their liability for dead spacecraft.

ViviSat isn’t the only firm aiming to build orbital mechanics. Another aerospace company, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA), is also working on a new spacecraft that could refuel and repair aging vehicles in orbit.

http://www.space.com/18520-space-gas-station-vivisat-satellite.html

*Note: The following comments are excerpted from U.S. Space Co-Founder Ed Horowitz’s appearance in front of the Washington Space Business Roundtable, October 16 in Washington, D.C.

I can’t help but note the recent call to action by SMC Commander General Pawlikowski for redefining the way satellite systems are specified, launched and possibly paid for as comforting.

We have spoken before about the ever increasing pace of change – where the developments of the next 25 years will equal the last 350 years. We have spoken about my favorite economist Joseph Schumpeter and his principle of creative destruction which describes the way in which capitalist economic development arises out of the destruction of some prior economic order.

The satellite industry’s dream has to be an inexhaustible effort to make the future, not just to predict it and as Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

However you look at it, the satellite business gathers information in its various forms on Earth, transmits it to the sky, and re-distributes it back to specific Earth destinations in a secure manner.

The value is almost always provided and located first on Earth. In other words, most of the value activities are still earth bound and essentially passive, like a network server or train switching station.

It is a three way system – first Earth, second space and third back to Earth. Consider one disruptive and exciting possibility to dramatically alter the equation by actively originating value in space first, and then transferring it to Earth. Such a disruptive change would be considered a two way system – first space and second Earth.

Call this two way concept “harvesting” and, like anything else, there can be many degrees of harvesting. We are already in space. We know how to re-distribute from there better than anyone. What we have to learn is how to derive space based content origination – also maybe how to build in space.

Another level of harvesting would be to take advantage of assets already in space. Figure out ways to give them additional life, or deliver on orbit upgrades to processors and power systems. With proper engineering one does not have to bring the entire building to space. Just new furniture. On orbit servicing is a new possibility with multiple approaches in the offing. DARPA is looking at it.

The government is the largest single customer opportunity we have. We have begun to get on their strategic planning page. Witness General Pawlikowski’s white paper. They have special needs. We have the commercial capability to meet them. They have to develop a commercial roadmap to be able to purchase them.

Today, the satellite business is producing reliable earnings for shareholders. But undeniably, there are changes on the horizon dictated, if nothing else, by the changing worlds of our customers. And they expect us to “get it”.