spacetoday.net: NASA confirms plans to cancel OSAM-1

Posted: Sun, Sep 8, 2024, 10:02 AM ET (1402 GMT)
NASA has confirmed plans to cancel a $2 billion satellite servicing mission. The agency announced Thursday that it will close out the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) project at the end of the month, reaffirming a decision it announced in March. Congress had directed NASA to develop an alternative plan to revise the mission to enable a 2026 launch, but NASA said it concluded that alternative was not feasible. NASA was developing OSAM-1 to refuel the Landsat 7 spacecraft and test on-orbit assembly of an antenna, but the mission has fallen far behind schedule and over budget. NASA still needs congressional approval to cancel OSAM-1, but released later Thursday a request for information seeking concepts to repurpose the hardware developed for the mission.