ROAMER

Goal: With orbital crowding of aging technology, a cost-effective and time-efficient mechanism for repairing and altering current on-orbit assets is needed. ROAMER will provide an exploratory orbiting microsat capable of maintenance tasks, repairs, and service to orbital assets. The use of a refillable water thruster (ThermaSat) and the small vehicle size provide safety by design for use near inhabited space stations. Further, ROAMER will be capable of orbit changes and plane changes between space stations for multimission maintenance tasks.

Partners: Howe Industries https://www.howeindustries.net/ in support of a Space Force STTR.

Interplanetary Laboratory key contributions: We created a System Engineering Report for the spacecraft portion of this project. For the study we developed a list of currently available components and conducted power, mass, volume and operations analysis. We also developed a 3D printed model to assess manufacturability, integration and handling.