Orbit Fab secures National Science Foundation funding to propel its satellite refueling tech to space
Summary
On-orbit satellite refueling technology is closer than ever to a practical reality, which could help immensely with the cost and sustainability of orbital businesses. Startup Orbit Fab, a 2019 TechCrunch Battlefield finalist, is one of the companies working to make orbital refueling a reality, and it just secured a new contract from the National Science Foundations early-stage deep tech R&D initiative Americas Seed Fund to further its goals.The contract is specifically for development of a solution that provides rendezvous and docking capabilities in space, managing the end-to-end process of connecting two spacecraft and transferring fuel from one to the other. Orbit Fab last October at Disrupt unveiled its connector hardware for making this possible, which it now refers to as its Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI). Its not resting on its laurels, and this new contract will help it prepare a technology demonstration of the docking process its RAFTI facilitates in its own test facilities this summer.Longer-term, this is just phase one of a multi-par tfunding agreement with the NSF. Phase one includes $250,000 to make that first demo, and then ultimately that will lead to an inaugural trial of a fuel sale operation in space, which Orbit Fab CMO Jeremy Schiel says should happen within two years.This will involve two satellites, our tanker, and a customer satellite, in a low Earth orbit (LEO) docking, exchanging fuel, and decoupling, and repeating this process as many times as possible to demonstrate our capability, he wrote via email.There have been a number of technical projects and demonstrations around orbital refueling, and some of the largest companies in the industry are working on the challenge.