why-darpa-and-nasa-are-building-robot-spacecraft-designed-to-act-like-service-stations-on-orbit

There's a graveyard in space littered with the corpses of dozens of dead satellites, a remote spot in the cosmos reserved to entomb spacecraft at the end of their lives. Even the most robust and expensive satellites eventually break down or run out of fuel, and must be retired to a remote parking orbit more than 22,000 miles away, safely out of the way of other satellites. There, the graveyard holds billions of dollars-worth of some of the most expensive hardware ever to leave the surface of the Earth -- including not just commercial communications satellites, but some of the Pentagon's most sensitive assets, used for spying, guiding bombs and warning against missile launches. Now, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency, NASA and others, are developing technologies that would extend the life of the critical infrastructure in space, preventing satellites from being shipped to the graveyard for years. If successful, the agencies would have fleets of robots with arms and cameras that could inspect, refuel and repair satellites keeping them operational well beyond their expected lifetimes.