The DART automated rendezvous technology demonstration spacecraft managed to sort-of rendezvous with its target satellite, but did not get within 17 feet of it as intended.
Good thing there’s a backup — XSS-11, a small spacecraft designed to perform similar rendezvous and proximity operations, was successfully launched on Monday. While having a slightly different focus, the XSS-11 project seems even more ambitious than DART:
During its mission, the XSS-11 craft will approach dead or unused US satellites or old rocket parts. At each rendezvous, the Air Force satellite will burn its engines to move around the object while taking a range of pictures.
Normally, ground controllers instruct a satellite when to fire its engines. But, after a commissioning and testing phase, XSS-11 will only take instruction on where to find a dead satellite. Then, with its on-board planner, it will calculate when to burn its engines…
During its lifetime, XSS-11 will rendezvous with six to eight objects, the first of which will probably be the upper stage of the Minotaur rocket that carried it into space. The Air Force wants to be able to service and inspect military satellites in space…
NASA is also interested in using such technology for a Mars-sample-return mission, so that a lander would be able to dock autonomously with a mother ship after a visit to the surface. Spacecraft autonomy is one of the requirements for President George W Bush?s plan for human missions to the Moon and Mars.
Not to mention the ability to autonomously assemble and resupply large spacecraft in orbit.
Naturally, since such a spacecraft can — like any tool — be used for destructive purposes, the development of such a capability is twisting knickers in certain quarters:
However, Theresa Hitchens, vice president for the Center for Defense Information, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says that the XSS-11 satellite could be the predecessor for a space-based weapon. If a micro-satellite could approach other satellites, she says, it could also adjust its speed and ram into the satellite, damaging it or knocking it off course. And smaller satellites are more difficult to detect from the ground. But officially, the US Air Force has no offensive satellite weapons program.
Like that’s a bad thing to have in the toolbox. Just wait until some rogue state knocks out their Link TV feed and see how quickly they change their tune.