>> Kyle Herring: Earlier in the week, the robotics team
in collaboration with the European --
the Canadian Space Agency,
which obviously supplied the station's robotics,
the major components of the robotics system
of the International Space Station,
along with investigators
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center participated all week
in the robotic refueling demonstration.
And we have an opportunity to talk
to Ben Reed who's the Deputy Project Manager
for the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Greenbelt,
Maryland.
Ben, are you there?
>> Ben Reed: I am here, yes.
>> Kyle Herring: Hey.
Well, I really appreciate you stopping by.
I know you've had probably one of the busier weeks,
maybe not just weeks -- week, but couple of weeks in preparing
for this and then leading up to all this activity this week.
First off, I have to ask, how's your weather up there?
I heard there was some storms headed your way.
>> Ben Reed: Right now it is cold.
We've had below freezing for three or four days,
but presently no precip, so not too bad.
>> Kyle Herring: Well, down here it's probably about 70
and sunny, but that's okay.
Not inside here in Mission Control and probably not inside
where you are, shirt-sleeve environment.
Lay the groundwork for us
in what y'all did each day this week.
I know you had a little bit of a glitch getting started.
Obviously, you can talk about that if you want at the outset.
But lay the groundwork for us of what y'all did this week
and how it ended this morning earlier.
>> Ben Reed: Well, we've had an incredibly successful.
We could not be more pleased with the cooperation
of the folks the robofliers down at Mission Control,
the Canadian Space Agency, our good friends Pro
at Marshals Space Flight Center, as well as my team here
at Goddard working together on this robotics
and fueling mission, which I don't want
to sound overly dramatic, but it is -- it is or it might be --
only history will tell --
that the start of what could be a revolution of a new era
in how satellites are built and flown in space.
And so what do I mean by that?
Well, what we're doing on space station with the robotics
and fueling mission, what we did this past week was
to demonstrate that present-day technology is able to access,
take apart, disassemble the fittings, the lock wire,
these small caps, this crushable seal that is, you know,
half the diameter of a penny with present-day technology,
with the robot Dextre, special purpose Dextre's manipulator
up on space station, is able to undo these triple seals that are
on more than 900 satellites presently operating in space.
What that means is that fleet owners and operators,
people who run these satellites,
perhaps could have options in the future.
The present paradigm is to operate a satellite;
when it has an anomaly or when it runs out of fuel,
you decommission it, you build a replacement assuming you have
the funds to do so.
What satellite servicing brings to the table is the possibility
that one could go up with a robotic spacecraft
and give it more fuel, fix a solar array, perform some sort
of a servicing function, a repair, a refueling
or relocation to allow that satellite
to continue its operations longer.
And the unique capability of the space station with Dextre
up there, with the ELC platform
where you can mount technology demonstration payloads
like this, it's simply fantastic.
It allows us to quickly advance technologies,
prove that the technologies work in orbit for much, much cheaper
than if I had to do this on my own, as it were,
without the help of the great capabilities
of the International Space Station.
>> Kyle Herring: Well, that's -- you know, I was going to ask you
about that, 'cause, you know, that's one thing
that people maybe tend to overlook is, you know,
think about the station as a science laboratory
because of what we're doing inside, but the station is
like a -- kind of like the shuttle was.
It's like a tested and this a -- isn't this a perfect opportunity
to demonstrate that, that this station can be used
for this type of work that, you know, ten years from now,
maybe sooner, we're doing the kinds of thing
that you guys are studying?
>> Ben Reed: Absolutely.
I couldn't agree more.
I am space station's biggest fan;
working with the payloads office there in Houston to get a ride
to orbit and then a nice safe installation onto the outside
of the station, be able to conduct your experiment,
and then when the experiment is done, you would --
we get to use that technology and go to the next step.
Space station simply turns its attention, as you said,
that alpha magnetic spectrometer, right.
Yesterday you're working on my thing,
today you're working on the next one.
I mean it's -- and I realize lots and lots
of things are happening concurrently,
but it really is an incredible in-orbit infrastructure
that allows rapid technology development and demonstration,
and I couldn't be more pleased to take advantage of it,
and I know my potential future clients are also pleased
that they can point to this and say, hey, look.
This is -- it's been demonstrated in space,
my anxiety can be eased that much more
because I've seen it actually happen in Zero-G.
I don't have to take somebody's word for it
that a ground demonstration will work the same in orbit.
>> Kyle Herring: So lay out how the week kind of progressed
for you guys and where you started and where you ended.
Because I think, didn't you end
with an actual simulated refueling of the satellite?
>> Ben Reed: Yes.
Yes. So we started middle of last week.
We had a couple of days of operations where we used Dextre
to pick up our wire cutter tool, we cut lock wire.
And this is small wire, this wire is twenty-thousandths
of an inch, so not large wire by any stretch.
But we were able to precisely snag that wire,
use our custom-built wire cutter tool to snip the wire.
We then put that tool on the back burner,
picked up our multifunction tool
with its special adapter that's been designed
to handle a tertiary cap, which is about the size --
a little bit smaller than a coffee mug.
We securely fastened ourselves over that tertiary cap,
unscrewed it, and safely stowed it to the top of our module.
Still holding the wire cutter tool, we then moved in
and cut two more wires, equally small, put those two tools away,
the wire cutter tool and the multi function tool away.
We then used our safety cap tool to remove the next cap
that was nested under the tertiary cap,
and this is completely different form factor from the first cap,
so we had to have a different tool to do it.
We removed that cap, safely stowed it,
and then last night was the final act.
That's where we picked up our nozzle tool,
we threaded onto the exposed fill-in drain valve threads,
which any roboticist will tell you, is not easy to do.
Threading on is tricky business.
But we expertly -- we, the joint team, expertly threaded on.
We then opened up a series of valves, reservoirs, pumps,
turned them on through our friends down at Marshall,
and we pumped 1.3 liters of liquid ethanol
across this robotically-mated interface with no leakage.
Very successful.
We were very happy.
We then separated and left behind a --
we withdrew the tool, leaving behind a quick disconnect
fitting, and in the process of doing so, we expected it,
we predicted it, there was a very small amount of ethanol
that was trapped between the two seals,
and we have a very cool video of that ethanol spraying
out in the vacuum of space and then rapidly evaporating.
And that will be posted on our website
and I'm sure YouTube before the day is out.
So I encourage people to go -- to go look for that.
And then we put that tool away and we concluded roughly
around midnight eastern yesterday.
>> Kyle Herring: You know, you mentioned
about the residual ethanol and, you know, that's one of the --
one of the things that we talked about, you know,
when we do space walks and how critical it is to try
to make sure that we --
you know, connections like you mentioned are very precise
with cabling and things like that.
And I guess this is just another way of showing, you know --
'cause space walks are very valuable obviously,
and they're as risky as just
about any other activity we do in space.
So the robotic marriage of crew members outside doing tasks
and the robotics of doing tasks are --
this is just another demonstration of that.
But what you're talking about doing, and I wanted
to ask you about, you know, what are the next steps now,
but what you're doing is talking about servicing satellites that,
you know, astronauts right now cannot get to.
And that's a much more expensive process anyway probably
in the long run, right?
>> Ben Reed: That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
I think a good analogy that many of our listeners
and viewers will be able to associate
with is deep water oil drilling.
So we send divers down quite deep to help assemble
and maintain these rigs, but when we need to go really deep,
that's when we send the remote operated vehicles,
and only the ROVs go really,
really deep where it's more dangerous,
where humans cannot get to yet.
Well, robotics in orbit I think is very, very similar.
We have done countless amazing feats with humans
and robots working in lower earth orbit;
Hubble Space Telescope, the Solar Maximum Repair Mission,
all the assembly and maintenance
of the space station are fantastic examples
of what we can do as an agency.
But to go further out, presently, today, in 2013,
say to geosynchronous orbit, is prohibitive right now
with present day technologies for our astronaut corps,
and that is the area where robotics can step in.
So we still have human in the loop, it's still humans
and robots working together, only the humans are
on the ground with the joysticks, with the procedures,
making those intelligent decisions
that only humans can do, and we use robots
where it presently is inaccessible by astronauts.
So in my world, it is never, never either/or.
It's just a matter of how do we adjust the paradigm
for that particular environment with humans
and robots working cooperatively together.
>> Kyle Herring: I wanted to take a brief moment just
to remind everybody, we're talking
with Ben Reed who's the Deputy Project Manager
for the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office
up at Goddard Space Flight Center,
NASA's facility outside Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt.
And Ben, you're setting me up perfectly for my questions,
because you mentioned Hubble, and Hubble Space Telescope
from the very beginning was designed
to be serviced in space.
We knew that it was going to be launched, and over periods
of time we were going to change out the science experiments
as technology advanced and cameras were advanced,
and that's what we did on five different servicing missions
and it was designed that way.
We still, even then, when astronauts were working
on Hubble, we ran into some issues here and there
and learned from them.
We designed tools specifically for Hubble servicing.
But these -- these communication satellites and other satellites
that are out as far as geo, you know,
obviously they weren't designed to ever be touched again,
and what you're doing is demonstrating this capability
on those types of satellites.
So do we learn from this in the future design of satellites?
Say, okay, well, we're learning how to refuel these robotically,
so you might want to change your design.
So you mentioned the satellite builders are taking great
interest in what you're doing.
Can you describe a little bit about what the future holds
for maybe satellite design, that type of thing?
>> Ben Reed: Well, I got to say, you're setting me
up perfectly for my answers.
So we have been approached by various stakeholders
in the geosatellite community with exactly
that type of question.
Ben, if servicing in geo is going to happen by somebody
in the near future -- and by near I mean, you know, five,
six, seven years -- what can I do as an owner
or as an insurance provider or as a satellite manufacturer
to make my asset -- my very expensive asset
in that orbit more amenable to servicing?
And so because of the work we've been doing with RRM
and other aspects of our ground technology campaign,
we put together a list of specific actions,
not generalities like, make your connections standard.
You know, they need specifics.
So we put together a list of specific actions
that stakeholders
in the geosatellite community could do now with satellites
that are on the shop floor being built presently
to make themselves more amenable to servicing.
And being NASA, I am required by law to have an acronym
for that list, and that list is called COSA, c-o-s-a,
or Cooperative Servicing Aids.
And we issued this letter, this COSA letter,
to the geo stakeholder community,
it's out on the Internet, and it's not to mandate
to anyone what they need to do, but rather to open a discussion
with the various members of that community
as to what makes sense.
I don't think anybody's going
to attach a kilogram grapple fixture
to a geo communications bird next week.
By no stretch of the imagination is that what is being suggested.
But rather, you know, maybe a decal, put a bumper sticker
or two on the aft end that would aid the cameras and the lasers
that are going to help with guiding two vehicles together.
You know, something that is low mass,
low impact that could be done in the near term.
That's a discussion that is being begun now, and I'm sure --
well, I certainly hope will continue for,
you know, for years to come.
>> Kyle Herring: Yeah, exactly.
One last thing before I let you go.
What's next for you guys?
What do you see coming up?
You know, further work obviously with RRM on orbit.
And what do you see coming up next?
>> Ben Reed: So in our near feature,
later this year we are going
to launch two additional task boards.
So I haven't mentioned that phrase yet, task board,
but we designed the RRM module
to be modular, to be serviceable.
So many of our legacy satellite interfaces that are on RRM are
on task boards that are easily removable
by the special purpose dexterous manipulator.
So later this year we will launch two additional task
boards, and they will be taken out through the JEM airlock,
to the Japanese Experiment Module external airlock,
and then robotically swap out the ones that are on RRM now
with the new ones, and that will give us a fresh set of tasks
that we would like to demonstrate, to practice on,
to learn from on orbit.
So RRM is not over.
We have additional tasks yet still on it to be done this year
that are presently up there,
and then these new tasks boards will follow immediately
in the summer or the early fall.
So we've got a busy agenda yet ahead of us.
>> Kyle Herring: Well, that's great,
and I know it's very slow process but you have
to start somewhere, and this is has been --
as you said, it's been an amazing week.
It's been fun to watch, you know,
from here in the flight control room.
And good luck with all the future stuff
with everything you guys are planning.
And thanks again for joining us here in mission control, Ben.
>> Ben Reed: It's been my pleasure.
Thank you.
>> Kyle Herring: Okay, that's Ben Reed.
He's the Deputy Project Manager
for the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, one of the field centers
that support the agency.
It's in Greenbelt, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C.,
just outside the beltway.
The -- and as you heard Ben say, the plans are
for future task boards to be launched
to the International Space Station.
So I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more
about robotic refueling in the future using the space station
as a tested for those activities.