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Space Tug

Posted on: Thursday, 8 April 2004, 06:00 CDT

IOSTAR Corp. wants to build a boat to rescue wayward satellites

Every year, a dozen or more commercial satellites are launched into Earth orbit. And, each year, something goes wrong with one or two of them.

IOSTAR Corp., a company with plans for an Albuquerque headquarters and upward of 500 related jobs here, aims to haul those broken satellites off the celestial shoulder and put them back to work.

Backed by a promised $1.5 billion in government-guaranteed loans and a complex agreement with Sandia National Laboratories to provide the power, IOSTAR wants to build a nuclear "space tug" to help salvage wayward or broken commercial satellites worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Just think of it as a tow truck in space.

Using several remotely controlled space tugs, the firm hopes to tap a projected $7 billion market for repositioning or retrieving commercial satellites currently written off as losses by insurance companies.

IOSTAR officials also believe the efficient tugs could be used to help cut launch costs by picking up the satellites once they enter space and carrying them the rest of the way to their orbital plane.

The first such tug could be in space by 2009, the company says.

"Out of the dozens of satellites launched each year, on average, two are bad," said IOSTAR president James Stuart. "Usually, the reason is they're in the wrong orbit. So their owners can't even turn them on. They're just paperweights owned by the insurance companies. We'll put it in the right place and mitigate the claim."

Expensive errors

There are about 240 commercial satellites orbiting the earth, says Phil Smith, a space industry analyst with Maryland-based technology consulting firm Futron. Used for everything from telecommunications to remote sensing, industry revenues topped $86 billion in 2002.

A single satellite can cost more than $600 million. But if something goes wrong -- from a malfunction to a missed orbit -- there's not much anyone can do, Smith says.

According to a 2002 Futron study, the cost of insuring commercial satellites increased 129 percent in the preceding four years, on par with an even larger increase in the number of unexpected problems.

IOSTAR envisions not only retrieving or fixing satellites, but even salvaging devices that were written off years ago, putting them into the right orbit, and selling them.

"Insurance companies would be a major customer," Stuart said.

Power

Rescuing satellites isn't a new concept.

For years, companies like IOSTAR parent corporation Intraspace Corp. have grappled with how to do it without spending more on getting there than the satellite is worth, said Roger Lenard, a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia, which is developing the nuclear-reactor engines for IOSTAR.

"It was obvious that every single known propulsion system wouldn't even break even," he said.

After considering all sorts of systems during IOSTAR's eight- year development, Sandia researchers finally centered on an electric thruster system, in which charged particles are shot out into space much as a television tube's electron gun fires particles at the inside of the screen. The electricity will be generated on board with a nuclear reactor.

"This will be the first commercial space reactor," Stuart said.

At a cost of about $500 million each in regular production, IOSTAR's space tug would be about half the length of a football field. At one end would be the thrusters, the reactor and two tennis court-size radiators, that look like giant solar panels, to dissipate the reactor's enormous heat. At the other end, a grappling device would attach to satellites.

The entire device would be assembled on Earth and launched in one piece into space, where it would unfold to its full size. Sandia would build the reactor, install it at a Florida launch site, and maintain complete control over it for the entirety of the tug's working life.

"We'll be completely independent from the people who are trying to make a profit," Lenard said. "Unless the project goes belly up, Sandia gets paid the same thing whether it's buzzing around on revenue jobs or sitting there, so safety can be a priority."

The tug itself would be built and launched under contract to IOSTAR by Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., which would also operate the tug's mission control centers.

Jobs

IOSTAR officials believe the company can pay back its government loan with the revenue generated by three tugs. Projects call for more than $2 billion in revenues by 2013.

With several tugs in orbit, Stuart says, 500 to 700 jobs could be generated at Sandia just to control the reactors.

The firm currently has 14 employees in Salt Lake City but plans to move its headquarters to Albuquerque. A possible second mission control center in the state could also provide skilled jobs, Stuart said.

At full capacity, the company's headquarters could eventually employ 70, Stuart said.

The company, which is one of 18 scheduled presenters at Technology Ventures Corp.'s coming Equity Capital Symposium May 11 and 12, is seeking $15 million in investment capital to meet the benchmarks required to tap into the $1.5 billion loan.

It is also seeking investment from the State Investment Council.

IOSTAR so far has spent $10 million to develop the space tug.

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