Towards an In-Orbit CubeSat Factory

Abstract

Current satellites must be designed to withstand the vibrations of a rocket start and are manufactured long before their operational start in orbit, thus creating long lead times, high expenses, and mission inflexibility. Our concept of an In-Orbit Factory aims to solve those problems, by providing an adaptive just-in-time production of customized CubeSats at the place of their deployment within hours after their specification. The envisioned factory brings together three technologies to form a pioneering solution: an automated and adaptive robotic Assembly, Integration and Testing (AIT) process, a robotic teleoperation process using advanced Virtual Fixtures (virtual force fields) for commissioning of the factory, maintenance, and recovery and a digitial representation through a Digital Process Twin (DPT). The DPT computes the required CubeSat configuration based on customer requirements and supervises the AIT process. The teleoperation process is the human interface to the factory which is first required for the commissioning phase when optimizations are needed to ensure smooth operations of the In-Orbit Factory and to tune the process for optimized throughput. At a later stage, it allows for recovery operations or to perform rare high-precision manipulation. A core benefit of our factory using CubeSats is that it allows us to utilize existing and relatively cheap components, with the vision of a cost-effective in-orbit validation. As challenges in robotic handling of components as well as the in-orbit testing process remain the same for larger structures, our methods are also suited for produc tion of e.g. large satellites. This presentation presents the concept of our envisioned In-Orbit Factory, its current implementation on Earth, as well as the near-operational evaluation of core concepts on a space-ready robot.