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A conceptual design demonstrates how a docking port may be incorporated onto a satellite using the Mission Augmentation Port (MAP) interface standard. (Image: Lockheed Martin)

SPACE SYMPOSIUM: Lockheed Martin is not only building a new interface and docking system for upgrading payloads or shifting a satellite’s mission on orbit, but it’s also seeking to influence industry-wide standardization around their approach, according to company officials.

“Lockheed Martin has really been making strides to push for open source interface standards, particularly tied to on-orbit servicing,” Paul Pelley, senior director of advanced programs at Lockheed Martin Space, told Breaking Defense just prior to the opening of the Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

The company’s new satellite adapter kit, called the Augmentation System Port Interface (ASPIN), provides both an electric and data interface as well as a docking mechanism that fits onto a host satellite. That interface would then allow the owner/operator to later contract for a servicing spacecraft to fly and mate upgraded payloads to the old sat on orbit, or even to switch out old for new ones with different missions, Pelley explained.

He compared it to a USB port on modern computers, allowing multiple types of devices and applications to be connected and uploaded.

But thinking even farther ahead, the defense giant on April 4 (the Symposium’s opening day) published online what it calls the Mission Augmentation Port (MAP) interface standard that explains how any other company could also build a similar interface/docking system for their own spacecraft.

The standards documents published online “can be used by designers to develop their own MAP-compliant docking adapters that will — barring some required discussion between servicers and hosts to coordinate missions — permit interoperability of docking satellites,” the release explained. “Specifically, the documents released contain the information required for a compliant physical mate of docking port halves, such as the dimensions of plates and petals.”

At a media tour of the company’s Littleton, Colo., facility the same day, Pelley noted that the ASPIN itself complies with the MAP standard, and that ASPIN from now on will be part of its baseline LM 2100 Combat Bus as well as its smaller ones.

The LM 2100 is the basis for the Space Force’s Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Geosynchronous satellite 5. It also will be used in the newer versions of the GPS III Follow-on (GPS IIIF) satellites, starting with space vehicle 13 (SV-13). Space Force in October 2020 exercised the option in its 2018 contract with Lockheed Martin to buy GPS IIIF SV-13 and -14; and in November 2021 it optioned SV-15, -16 and -17.

That said, Pelley explained, it will be up to Space Force, as the customer, to decide if it in future wants to upgrade those satellites after they are launched.

Further, he said, “it’s an open field as to what goes on there.” In fact, Pelley said he hopes that the adapter will spur firms across the space industry to develop applications for it — and that a number of small firms have contacted him about possible uses.

“They’re all ready coming,” he said.