Robotic arms, tiny helper satellites: Military explores how to upgrade, repair assets in space

Satellites are notoriously hard to upgrade. Located anywhere from hundreds of miles to tens of thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface, the machines are difficult to reach physically. For years, engineers have designed satellites with the expectation that the hardware and software they put on orbit with a satellite is all they’d get. That incentivized exquisite satellite designs, built to last many years in space before finally being replaced by a satellite with upgraded technologies. More

(Source: C4ISRNet - Sep 9)