NASA Cancels Big-Budget Robotic Servicing Demonstration

NASA announced on March 1 that it is terminating its On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission, which was supposed to have refueled Landsat 7, demonstrating capabilities for robotically servicing satellites not designed to be serviced.

The mission, formerly called RESTORE-L, also incorporated a robotic arm called Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) that would have assembled a 3-meter communications antenna and a 10-meter beam. Congress has strongly supported OSAM-1, appropriating about $1.5 billion to date and often exceeding the amounts annually requested for it.

However, the project’s cost and schedule estimates have been unstable, with the price tag currently pegged at more than $2 billion. NASA states its termination decision is linked to “continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges, and a broader community evolution away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, which has led to a lack of a committed partner.”

Last year, NASA’s Office of Inspector General highlighted poor performance by the contractor Maxar as a key cause of the project’s ongoing difficulties.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland has been developing OSAM-1 and the agency states it is “reviewing how to mitigate the impact of the cancellation” on the center’s workforce.

This news brief originally appeared in FYI’s newsletter for the week of March 4.