Last year, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) and Intelsat (News - Alert) announced an agreement where Intelsat would be the anchor customer for robotically servicing satellites. Last week –January 11, to be precise – MDA (News - Alert) announced the agreement “has ceased to be in effect,” but the company still holds out hope to bid on a NASA demonstration project to be announced in February.

Announced at the Satellite 2011 conference in March 2011, Intelsat said it would put up $280 million for MDA to refuel and service Intelsat communications satellites in geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO).    MDA had planned to launch its robotic servicing tug in 2014 and start operations in late 2014. The spacecraft would have conducted a docking between the two craft, followed by a robotic arm opening up the fuel cap, attaching a hose and filling up a satellite with fuel, before neatly sealing everything back up and leaving for its next client.

Intelsat has a fleet of 50 communications satellites, so it would have made the ideal anchor customer for a robotic servicing tug.   However, other commercial and U.S. government customers failed to materialize. Space News and other sources have said Intelsat tried to get the U.S. Department of Defense to bankroll a refueling mission, but the U.S. Air Force couldn't find the funding.

Complicating matters for MDA is NASA's own separate agenda in fostering in-orbit refueling for spacecraft and satellites. NASA is currently operating a Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) on the International Space Station (ISS) to test and demonstrate how a robot can refuel existing in-orbit satellites, and officials at the agency have been very outspoken that U.S. companies should enter the field. 

Since MDA is a Canadian company, this effectively puts MDA and NASA at odds at odds as to what entity should be servicing U.S. government satellites. Add in the factor of the U.S. Defense Department, and suddenly the portrait of a non-U.S. robot – even one operated by a friendly neighbor to the north – pulling up next to a billion dollar imaging satellite might not be so appealing.

Needless to say, Intelsat hasn't lost hope that one day robotic servicing might become practical and the company remains interested in future options. This year, Intelsat's New Dawn satellite failed to deploy its C-band antenna due to a design flaw, costing the company a contract backlog of approximately $310 million and an estimated two years of service life, according to Space News. An in-orbit servicing capability could have provided close-up inspection of the antenna and potentially opened it up; instead the company has to write off the loss.

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