Despite announcing the cancelation of the On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (OSAM) 1 mission in March 2023, NASA is now assessing a plan to revive the project. The agency had cited significant cost overruns and delays, as well as a lack of a committed partner for the mission's satellite servicing technology demonstration, as reasons for its cancellation. However, a provision in the fiscal year 2024 appropriations bill mandated NASA to adjust the mission for a 2026 launch within the budget outlined in its 2024 budget request.
“We were asked to go in and look at what it would take to ramp that down, but also we got the opportunity to say how you might save that project, how you might get it back on schedule and back on budget,” Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said during an Aug. 13 earnings call. Intuitive Machines has an engineering services contract with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which leads the OSAM-1 mission.
“We did that, and we worked with NASA to put a plan together that actually puts it back on schedule for its launch and back in the budget box,” Altemus added. “That was briefed up the chain to NASA.”
While the plan was presented to NASA leadership, the agency has yet to make a decision about resuming the mission. “NASA directed the OSAM-1 project to develop two potential forward plans for review: one to meet a 2026 launch date and another to close out the project,” NASA spokesperson Jasmine Hopkins told SpaceNews on Aug. 15. “These plans have been provided to NASA leadership and are being assessed.”
In order to proceed with the mission, NASA may have to make significant adjustments to its scope. An independent review board, commissioned by NASA to evaluate OSAM-1, recommended that the mission's workforce be reduced to no more than 200 people and that the Maxar-built spacecraft bus be accepted without further modifications. The board also suggested removing a lidar instrument and the SPIDER space robotics experiment from the critical path to avoid further delays, setting a firm launch readiness date no later than February 2026.
However, the review board ultimately recommended canceling OSAM-1, highlighting the project's substantial cost and schedule risks. “Both cost- and schedule-to-go are substantial and the risk for further schedule decay and cost increases remains high,” the board concluded. It estimated that the mission would require an additional $1 billion and could potentially slip to March 2028.
Despite the Senate's allocation of funds for OSAM-1, there is no clear consensus within Congress on the mission's continuation. The House spending bill for fiscal year 2025 did not include any funding for the mission, with appropriators requesting an update from NASA on the feasibility of launching the mission in 2026. Even the Senate report emphasized the need for a "reasonable and executable plan" to meet the cost and schedule requirements before allocating any funds in 2025.
Both the House and Senate appropriators called upon NASA to find alternative partners for OSAM-1, such as the Defense Department. However, the independent review noted that while the Defense Department has expressed interest in satellite refueling as part of "dynamic space operations," it prioritizes such capabilities in geostationary orbit rather than low Earth orbit, where OSAM-1 is intended to operate.
Despite concerns about the potential impact on the industrial base if OSAM-1 is not continued, Defense Department personnel interviewed by the review board "were consistent in their view that the high cost, relatively short operational life, the mission orbit in LEO and OSAM-1's own inability to be refueled did not make their industrial impact concerns override consideration of program termination or substantial redirection."