Matthew Nelson
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a formal solicitation for an other transaction agreement with the goal to develop and demonstrate a robotic servicing vehicle for government and commercial geosynchronous satellites.
According to a FedBizOpps notice posted Saturday, DARPA is looking for an industry team that will help the agency build the servicer platform in GEO and expects the RSV owner to earn revenues through robotic servicing of public and private satellites.
DARPA said a potential builder-operator-owner team should know how to manufacture GEO-qualified spacecraft bus and integrate a government-provided payload onto the bus as well as provide vehicle launch, ground communications and operations support after on-orbit demonstrations are completed.
The RSV will feature two robotic arms, a pod capture technology and two panchromatic cameras. The vehicle will be designed to also perform mechanical anomaly correction, orbit change assistance, installation update and spacecraft inspection and diagnostics functions.
The OTA will consist of spacecraft and payload construction, deployment and capability testing phases.
July 23 is the deadline for interested parties to submit their proposals to the agency.
