SpaceX launches a robot that repairs satellites in orbit

SpaceX launched Northrop Grumman's Mission Robotic Vehicle on July 21 — a spacecraft with two robotic arms built to do something satellites have rarely had done to them: get serviced in orbit. MRV-1's job is to reach aging communications satellites that are low on fuel, grapple them, and either refuel them or attach a jet pack that takes over their maneuvering.

Satellites are normally treated as disposable — once the fuel runs out, they're retired even if everything else on board still works. Northrop is betting servicing is now cheaper than replacing, at least for the large communications satellites that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and launch.

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Will MRV-1 actually complete a docking? The vehicle now has to find, approach, and physically grapple a satellite it wasn't designed to connect to — the riskiest maneuver of the entire decade-long mission, and one that hasn't been proven reliably at this scale before.