Air Force System for Refueling Spacecraft In-orbit

Mobility is key to mission success in a contested space theater, providing operational resilience and flexibility for both commercial and national security applications. Orbit Fab is accelerating the transition to refuellable architectures by offering a fueling port for in-orbit propellant transfer, whilst establishing the orbit propellant supply infrastructure. Orbit Fab’s core technology is the Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI) Fueling Port. This docking and fuel transfer interface was developed using the requirements gathered from over 20 different commercial end-users. RAFTI replaces the fill/drain valves that satellites use today giving the flexibility to refuel assets in orbit for the same cost. It is capable of supporting spacecraft docking or secondary attachment (i.e. berthing via a robotic arm) with misalignment tolerances in excess of +/- 10 mm and +/-5 degrees. Supported fluids include Hydrazine and its derivatives, Nitrogen Tetroxide, Xenon, Cold Gas, Water, and emerging Green Monopropellants. SMC, AFSPC, AFRL, and GSFC have all expressed interest in seeing this technology advanced to DoD standards. As such a full flight qualification program and associated studies and design work on this interface and Orbit Fab’s tanker spacecraft are proposed as a Phase II SBIR trial under