MEV-1

MEV-1 is being built at Orbital ATK’s Dulles, Virginia factory.

MEV-1 will rendezvous in geostationary orbit with Intelsat 901, an 18-year-old satellite in an inclined geosynchronous orbit.

MEV-1 will move Intelsat 901 into a new operational location in geostationary orbit over the Atlantic Ocean and remain attached for five years.

MEV-1 and Intelsat-901 will undergo additional checkouts as a combined stack before being moved into the geostationary arc.

Intelsat transitioned customers off Intelsat-901 in November and began moving the satellite out of the geosynchronous arc on 2019-12-02 to meet with MEV-1 in a graveyard orbit a few hundred kilometers above active satellites.

Northrop Grumman's first servicer, MEV-1, docked with an Intelsat satellite in a graveyard orbit a few hundred kilometers above active geostationary satellites.

A year earlier, Northrop Grumman’s MEV-1 lifted Intelsat’s defunct IS-901 satellite out of a geostationary graveyard orbit and returned it to service.

Intelsat extended its contract for MEV-1, which in 2020 docked with Intelsat-901 in a GEO graveyard orbit a few hundred kilometers above active satellites and lowered the spacecraft back into service.

At the end of the current servicing period, MEV-1 will relocate and release the Intelsat 901 satellite into the GEO graveyard and provide service for another Intelsat satellite.

Orbital ATK’s first Mission Extension Vehicle, MEV-1, is slated to launch in early next year to dock with Intelsat-901 and take over orbital station-keeping duties, extending the satellite’s service life by several years.

MEV-1 and Intelsat-901 will spend two to three months in a graveyard orbit about 300 km above the geostationary arc to conduct tests before climbing back down under MEV-1’s control and returning to commercial service in 2019.

International Launch Services’ Proton mission that carried MEV-1 and Eutelsat 5 West B was previously planned for 2019-09-30 but was delayed due to an issue identified during electrical testing of the rocket’s upper stage control system.

Intelsat 901 will raise its orbit to a graveyard orbit a few hundred kilometers above GEO prior to MEV-1 arrival to avoid interference with other GEO satellites.

MEV-1 completed in-orbit testing and paused 80 m from Intelsat-901 on 2020-02-24 during rendezvous operations.

Northrop Grumman incorporated patented technology to avoid electrostatic discharges on orbit into MEV-1 after delaying its launch from 2018 to 2019.

Northrop Grumman plans to move the MEV-1/Intelsat-901 stack into the geostationary arc so Intelsat-901 can resume service in late March 2020.

MEV-1 used onboard electric propulsion to raise its orbit to match Intelsat-901’s orbit by 2020-02-01.

Airbus Defence and Space planned to launch a satellite servicer shortly after Northrop Grumman launched MEV-1 but backed away from those plans two years earlier because of uncertainty about the commercial market.

Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicle 1 (MEV-1) successfully docked with the Intelsat 901 satellite and moved the satellite to a new location in geostationary orbit to allow it to continue operations.

MEV-1, the predecessor to MEV-2, attached to Intelsat’s IS-901 and lifted that satellite out of geostationary graveyard orbit to return it to service on 2020-04-02.