Performance of Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) RPO imagers at GEO

This paper will describe and illustrate the real-life performance of the Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) sensors used by Space Logistics LLC’s Mission Extension Vehicles (MEV) built by Northrop Grumman. MEV-1 launched in 2019 and performed rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking (RPOD) with the Intelsat 901 satellite in the GEO graveyard orbit approximately 300km above GEO in February of 2020. MEV-2 launched in 2020 and performed a similar RPOD sequence with the Intelsat 10-02 satellite directly in geostationary orbit in February and March of 2021. These vehicles use three dissimilar sensing phenomenologies to provide all required relative navigational data to enable the above RPOD capabilities. These include visible spectrum imagers (narrow and wide field of view), long wave infrared (LWIR) imagers (narrow and wide field of view), and active scanning LIDAR. This paper will explore the performance of each of these sensors during these real-life missions at GEO and potential implications for future Space Situational Awareness capabilities.