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Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

Recovering enemy satellites was one of the design goals imposed on the US Space Shuttle program by the Air Force. The shuttle ended up flying to the Hubble telescope to fix/upgrade it half a dozen times, though obviously they kept it in orbit rather than recovering it.

The DOD probably has a replacement for the shuttle that does the same thing. I seem to remember a DARPA program over a decade ago

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DARPA’s spacecraft became the x-37B, which probably has fuck-with-satellites capability via robot arm but a rather paltry 4 ft by 7 ft payload bay (The shuttle had 15 ft by 60 ft !)

What the x-37B lacks in payload volume, it more than makes up for in endurance: why temporarily bring a satellite to earth when you have weeks or months to remotely tamper in orbit?

> but a rather paltry 4 ft by 7 ft payload bay

IIRC there's a scaling limit with modern military/spy satellites on two axes: radar cross section and thermal output both grow with volume and make the satellite easier to target in a real conflict (which is ostensibly what many of them are for). The big ones like the satellite NRO donated to NASA with the 2.4 m diameter mirrors are easy to disable and AFAIK there's not much point recovering them anyway. The ones used for telecom with recoverable military encryption keys tend to be much smaller. For example, the 2nd gen Iridium constellation satellites are 30x40x70 cm.

Does the X-37B have the carrying capacity for the computer to replace the broken down one on Hubble and the humanoid bot surgical arms and hands to make the installation in place on orbit?

No.

The DOD actually wanted to be able to do it in a single orbit. Like a smash and grab in space. Would have been amazing if they pulled it off.

didn't the shuttle also take a satellite back down and then they launched it back into orbit?

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