Robot gas station planned for final shuttle flight

The Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) is designed to help figure out what's needed to refuel satellites in space. As NASA describes it, "RRM is expected to reduce risks and lay the foundation for future robotic servicing missions in micro-gravity."

Robot gas station planned for final shuttle flight
Fill'er up at an interstellar gas station

This should be rather interesting. One of the most expendable things on a satellite is it's fuel. The satellite could be still be perfectly serviceable, but without fuel to perform station keeping in orbit, it just becomes one more piece of space junk. Being able to refuel satellites could significantly boost their operational life and make them much more cost effective as their service life gets expanded.

Now what we need to do is figure out how to manufacture the fuel in space, so we don't pay the gravity penalty of bringing it up to the satellite that needs to be refueled.

I guess I'm the only one who thought this was interesting....