Image Caption: RROxiTT lead roboticist Alex Janas stands with the Oxidizer Nozzle Tool as he examines the work site. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

[ Watch The Video: Teaming Up to Test the Future of Satellite Refueling ]

Dewayne Washington and Adrienne Alessandro, NASA

The Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., checked another critical milestone off their list with the completion of their Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer Test (RROxiTT) in February 2014.

This is the first time that anyone has tested this type of technology, and weve proven that it works. Its ready for the next step to flight, says Frank Cepollina, veteran leader of the five servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope and the associate director of SSCO.

RROxiTT gives NASA, and the satellite community at large, confidence that advanced satellite refueling and maintenance technologies arent a wild dream of the future, says Cepollina. Theyre being built and tested today and the capabilities that they can unlock can become a reality.

Since 2009, SSCO has been investigating human and robotic satellite servicing while developing the technologies necessary to bring on-orbit spacecraft inspection, repair, refueling, component replacement and assembly capabilities to space.

Taking lessons learned from the successful Robotic Refueling Mission, the SSCO team devised the ground-based RROxiTT to test how robots can transfer hazardous oxidizer, at flight-like pressures and flow rates, through the propellant valve and into the mock tank of a satellite.

While this capability could be applied to spacecraft in multiple orbits, SSCO focused RROxiTT specifically on technologies that could help satellites traveling the busy space highway of geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO.

Located about 22,000 miles above Earth, this orbital path is home to more than 400 satellites, many of which beam communications, television and weather data to customers worldwide.

The rest is here:

New Robotic Refueling Technologies Tested By NASA