Imagine buying a million dollar car, but the moment it runs out of gas or a part breaks, you have to abandon it by the side of the road. Sounds crazy, right?

That’s what NASA and other space agencies have had to do with the multi-million dollar unmanned equipment they send into orbit around Earth. If something goes wrong in a launch, a part malfunctions, or a satellite runs out of fuel, NASA has to abandon the equipment, since there’s no cost effective way to bring it back to Earth or send people out to repair it.

That’s why NASA is putting $127 million into production of Restore-L, a robot that will be able to grasp, repair and refuel its fellow robots, then launch them back into orbit.

“Restore-L effectively breaks the paradigm of one-and-done spacecraft,” said Frank Cepollina, veteran leader of five crewed servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. “It introduces new ways to robotically manage, upgrade and prolong the lifespans of our costly orbiting national assets. By doing so, Restore-L opens up expanded options for more resilient, efficient and cost-effective operations in space.”

A private company called Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, California, is developing the newest (and only) space handyman. It could be ready as early as 2020, and its first mission will be to refuel Landsat-7, the satellite that takes pictures for the U.S. Geological Survey.

Once Restore-L has successfully completed its first mission, NASA hopes to use it extensively to repair broken satellites, and even clean up dangerous debris left behind by previous missions, so that Earth’s orbit doesn’t become filled with space junk.

If Restore-L performs as well as anticipated, it could mean more than fixing problems of the past; it could also mean exciting things for the future of space travel and exploration. It could pave the way for orbitng refueling, repair and manufacture stations.

Every Restore-L success also brings us one step closer to putting humans on Mars because the technology it uses would be essential for manned Mars exploration.

It’s also likely that once the technology is developed, it will be utilized in innovative ways that can’t be foreseen. Either way, this new technology opens a lot of exciting new doors for our work in space.

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