China Has Attempted What Might Be the First-Ever Orbital Refueling of a Satellite
https://www.wired.com/story/china-jumps-ahead-in-the-race-to-achieve-a-new-kind-of-reuse-in-space/
China Has Attempted What Might Be the First-Ever Orbital Refueling of a Satellite
https://www.wired.com/story/china-jumps-ahead-in-the-race-to-achieve-a-new-kind-of-reuse-in-space/
9 Comments
The SJ-21 and SJ-25 satellites “merged” on July 2 and have remained together since then.
Read the full article: [https://www.wired.com/story/china-jumps-ahead-in-the-race-to-achieve-a-new-kind-of-reuse-in-space/](https://www.wired.com/story/china-jumps-ahead-in-the-race-to-achieve-a-new-kind-of-reuse-in-space/)
Im fully convinced China is going to win the next space race
I’d bet the X-37 already achieved the same. Just under secret testing.
That would be pretty cool. Get more life out of satellites. Less waste etc. especially your more expensive resource intensive satellites. I wonder if that refueling satellite is reusable in some way as well.
I guess it could even change how much fuel you need to bring or store. Which could lead to more usable space on the satellite for more instruments or whatnot. Interesting to see where this might lead.
*Refueling of bi-propellants (hypergolic), also first in GEO.
We’ve been refueling space stations and misc LEO satellites with monopropellants since the 80’s. Still a good achievement for the development and expansion of human space infrastructure.
Next to be developed is cryogenic fuel transfer which will allow greater exploration of the inner solar system.
Boeing sabotaged US efforts to develop refueling tech more than five years ago: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-says-that-boeing-squelched-work-on-propellant-depots/
Congrats to china, as sad as i am to see the end of US space dominance the writings been on the wall
There are already American space tug things where the second satellite approaches the older, fully functional but out of fuel satellite and docks to its engine nozzle. Then it moves it to where we want it now. Then lets go and heads off to service another derelict satellite.
Neat, but no not even close to the first. [DARPA and NASA demonstrated this technology all the way back in 2007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Express)
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[DARPA](/r/Space/comments/1lvk5sn/stub/n26n5v6 “Last usage”)|(Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD|
|DoD|US Department of Defense|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1lvk5sn/stub/n26swd1 “Last usage”)|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1lvk5sn/stub/n26swd1 “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1lvk5sn/stub/n26m3oh “Last usage”)|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[hypergolic](/r/Space/comments/1lvk5sn/stub/n26m3oh “Last usage”)|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact|
|[monopropellant](/r/Space/comments/1lvk5sn/stub/n26m3oh “Last usage”)|Rocket propellant that requires no oxidizer (eg. hydrazine)|
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