Long-distance ailing NASA satellites to undergo ‘surgery’

 Medical robotics experts have now undertaken a project to fix NASA’s valuable satellites that are breaking down or running out of fuel.

Two graduate students at Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus in Baltimore used a modified da Vinci medical console to manipulate an industrial robot at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., about 30 miles away.

In this demonstration, the da Vinci console was the same type that doctors use to conduct robotic surgery on cancer and cardiac patients. It included a 3D eyepiece that allowed the operator in Baltimore to see and guide the robot at Goddard. It also provided haptic, or ‘touch’, feedback to the operator.

According to the Johns Hopkins engineers, the goal is to adapt some robotic operating room strategies to help NASA to perform long-distance ‘surgery’ on ailing satellites.

“We’re using the expertise we’ve developed in medical robotics technology and applying it to some of the remote-controlled tasks that NASA wants space robots to perform in repairing and refueling satellites,” said Louis Whitcomb, a Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering professor who was at Goddard to help supervise the recent demonstration.

Goddard is the home of NASA’s Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office, set up in 2009 to continue NASA’s 30-year legacy of satellite servicing and repair, including missions to the Hubble Space Telescope.

 Its aims are to develop new ways to service satellites and to promote the development of a U.S. industry for conducting such operations.

The task will be much more challenging when the target satellite is in orbit around the moon, for example. Because of the distance, there will be a significant delay between the time the operator signals the robot to move and the time these instructions are received and carried out. The research team is working on technology to help compensate for this delay.

“The long-range goal is to be able to manipulate a space robot like this from any location to refuel satellites, for instance,” Bohren said.

“A lot of satellites have the potential to have their lives extended if we can do that.”

Tian Xia, of Richland, Wash asserted that some satellites cost millions or even billions of dollars to construct and launch. If a cost-effective robotic rescue is possible, then abandoning spent satellites would be wasteful.

“It would be like driving a fancy car and then ditching it after it runs out of fuel,” he said.

“We already have a lot of computer-assisted surgical technology here at Johns Hopkins. We could use some of it to help fix and refuel satellites,” Xia added.