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(music)

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(beeping)

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Narrator: These days, one word drives high tech.

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Creativity. If nothing else,

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NASA’s Robotic Refueling Mission…RRM… is

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creativity embodied…and like all things creative, it’s not without

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challenges. Ben Reed: It’s not loading groceries into your shopping cart. It has

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It’s in a harsher environment. It’s going 18,000

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mph up in space. Spacecraft usually travel to orbit like museum

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pieces. They’re not meant to be fiddled with once they’re hung in their final destinations.

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But satellites are machines, and like all machines,

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fuel runs low. Parts wear out.

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RRM set out to prove that robots could repair them in space,

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without placing an astronaut at risk. It’s really hard to do…

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full of challenging problems.

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Ross Henry: …any problem is a solvable problem…and repairing satellites in space

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is not a new problem to solve.

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NASA has been wrestling with spacecraft on orbit for decades.

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Early efforts demanded human muscle. In 1984

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astronauts captured the Solar Max satellite for an

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astounding zero-G trip to the doctor. After a little TLC,

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it went back to work, good as new.

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The most famous orbital repairs happened with the Hubble Space Telescope.

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When astronauts paid it a final house-call in 2009,

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the billion dollar instrument got a new lease on life.

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Hugely expensive, extremely risky, the Hubble repair mission

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tested the bounds of human on-orbit capabilities…not to mention

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cost-benefit analysis. But mission success rein-

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reinforced the value of on-orbit repairs and the great Hubble Space Telescope

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continues to operate to this day.

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Complex machines, satellites are neither easily built nor replaced.

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Refueling and repairing them in space just makes

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sense. Ben Reed: Robots can do things that humans can’t do

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in terms of precision, in terms of control. Holding a particular spot

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for six hours while engineers on the ground debate what to do: we can’t

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ask a human to do that.

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Narrator: Will robots make astronauts obsolete?

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Not a chance, and the reason why is pretty awesome.

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Think of a car…like this…in for repairs.

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A mechanic can slide underneath…try to reach tough spots. But with

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a mechanical lift, repair options expand.

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Machines like this…like robots…act as enablers rather than

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replacements. Robots free astronauts from certain time consuming

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and risky operations. Astronaut time is better spent on

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command and control issues, as well as valuable research and exploration.

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Robots can also travel places astronauts are not

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likely to go. Teri Gregory: Other projects have been out to geosynchronous orbit

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and have spacecraft there and have been there for years. So we know what materials

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work there, we know what the environment is there, and we can use that information

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to build on what we’re going to do when we build our spacecraft to go there.

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Narrator: As NASA prepared to launch the final space

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shuttle, the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office pressed forward

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with an idea. A test…designed to see if robot

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technology was up to the job. In eighteen months

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the team designed the essential RRM experiments,

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getting hardware built, launched, and installed on the International Space Station.

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Teri Gregory: “We had a very aggressive schedule to launch in 2011 to make it

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onto the last shuttle flight, which we succeeded in doing. Ross Henry: So

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We always say we want to test as we fly. We want to test, test, and test

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again. Narrator: They did. The team completed a series

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delicate maneuvers, custom robotic tools standing in

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for astronaut fingers. RRM’s to-do

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list looked easy. Unscrew this, cut that, refill a tank like

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pulling up to the low octane pump, right? No.

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Not easy at all. Day two, in fact came to a halt

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halfway in the middle when engineers overseeing the robotic arm had some concerns.

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A crisis? Ben Reed: It certainly caught our attention, but it

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wasn’t a heart pounding moment. Not by any stretch. Narrator: And that’s the thing about missions

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like this. They demand the best from teams, and people

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don’t get on the team unless they’re willing to bring their A-game.

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On Day six,

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the team put three years of planning to work. With ethanol streaming

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into a test tank on orbit, engineers watched the data stream back to earth.

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There wasn’t much to see…but that wasn’t the point.

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It was a first. Word came over comms, loud and clear.

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SOT “you would agree…we have fluid transfer in progress.”

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No cheering yet. The team was still in

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the mission, and there were still jobs to do.

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Finally,

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simulated fuel transferred, the team moved to detach the valve.

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(music)

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Real experiments often yield interesting results.

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But after so much hard work, some things

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are just to be expected. (clapping)

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NASA’s reasons for doing this work go beyond the obvious. In

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fact, the deeper value for the nation…is ingenious.

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Ben Reed: I don’t want my job to be refueling communication birds for a living.

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I truly do not. I want to do it one time, kickstart a commercial

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industry that can then do it competitively. Narrator: This work helps

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open the door to a whole new kind of aerospace business.

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Big business. Engineering in space:

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inventive, daring, smart…and RRM

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delivered them all. But the big picture? There’s only one

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word that will suffice: …creative.

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Ross Henry: If you think RRM was incredible you guys haven’t seen anything yet.

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(beeping)