{"id":91466,"date":"2026-10-29T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T11:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/i-cant-refuel-you-im-sorry-satellite-servicers-cant-agree-on-a-plug\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T11:18:00","slug":"i-cant-refuel-you-im-sorry-satellite-servicers-cant-agree-on-a-plug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/i-cant-refuel-you-im-sorry-satellite-servicers-cant-agree-on-a-plug\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI Can\u2019t Refuel You. I\u2019m Sorry\u201d: Satellite Servicers Can\u2019t Agree on a Plug"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sierra
Sierra Space\u2019s Erik Daehler (center) on the MilSat Symposium servicing panel at Silicon Valley Space Week 2026. (Photo: SatNews)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two U.S. companies are sending refuelable satellites to geostationary orbit. They won\u2019t be able to refuel each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, Northrop Grumman and Sierra Space both have fully refuelable satellites going up into GEO and other orbits. We\u2019ve chosen different interfaces,\u201d Erik Daehler, senior vice president of defense technology at Sierra Space, said Wednesday at Silicon Valley Space Week\u2019s MilSat Symposium. \u201cWe have different plugs. We literally are going to walk up to each other and say, \u2018I can\u2019t refuel you. I\u2019m sorry.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason to refuel at all is military, Daehler said on the panel \u201cBuilding Warfighter-Ready Space Systems: Autonomy, Logistics, and On-Orbit Servicing.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re really doing refueling because our adversaries are refueling their spacecraft so that they can fly them like fighters.\u201d He wants the government to lead on a standard so every company can build to it.<\/p>\n

When moderator Andy Kwas, a Northrop Grumman Fellow, pressed the panel for a year, Daehler gave him a clock instead: 18 months \u201cfrom the day that the Space Force tells us to go dock with the SJ-25 and refuel from them,\u201d a reference to the Chinese satellite that reportedly refueled another in GEO last year. Order that demo, he said, and every company on the stage would adapt its system to that interface.<\/p>\n

The panel also included Jeff Chiow, chair of Greenberg Traurig\u2019s government contracts practice.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s already a standard. It\u2019s optional.<\/h2>\n

Owen Cupp, an executive director in Boeing\u2019s engineering and technology innovation group for Mission Systems, said a common interface payload standard already exists, but acquisition offices treat it as optional, much as a military standard often isn\u2019t a firm requirement.<\/p>\n

Space Systems Command named Northrop Grumman\u2019s Passive Refueling Module its preferred refueling interface in January 2024.<\/p>\n

Momentus Chairman and CEO John Rood, a former under secretary of defense for policy, warned against freezing one plug in place. \u201cWhy is the plug in your hotel room in Europe gigantic and weighs six times as much as something you can buy for your Apple computer? Because it\u2019s a government-mandated standard which has not been updated for 50 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rood would rather see groups like CONFERS and COSMIC converge on open standards, starting with simple aids such as grapple bars and orientation markers on spacecraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe adversary gets a vote\u201d<\/h2>\n

U.S. Space Command has pushed sustained space maneuver, with an emphasis on refueling, and the Space Force has stood up a mission area design team for it, said David Denhard, the command\u2019s chief scientist and technical adviser. He was blunt about the money: on-orbit servicing \u201chasn\u2019t been one we\u2019ve put a lot of money behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if we have an adversary that all of a sudden we wake up one day and can refuel in GEO, that\u2019s a problem for us, and that also drives urgency and dollars,\u201d Denhard said.<\/p>\n

What he wants from industry is a cost-benefit case, servicers that can do more than one job (pairing servicing with space domain awareness, for example) and full architectures rather than concepts.<\/p>\n

The next test comes in 2027, when the Space Force plans refueling and relocation demonstrations with Astroscale U.S. and Starfish Space using standardized docking fixtures, SatNews reported in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews Sierra Space\u2019s Erik Daehler (center) on the MilSat Symposium servicing panel at Silicon Valley Space Week 2026. (Photo: SatNews) Two U.S. companies are sending refuelable satellites to geostationary orbit. They won\u2019t be able to refuel each other. \u201cRight now, Northrop Grumman and Sierra Space both have fully refuelable satellites […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}