REACCHing for the Stars

REACCHing for the Stars

Austin Morris, Co-Founder & Director of Engineering

5 minute read

As one might imagine, putting hardware in space is not an easy undertaking. However, with a collective effort from numerous intelligent and passionate individuals all pulling together, incredible things are possible. This was specifically shown in the launch of SpaceX CRS-31 on November 4, 2024, that carried KMI’s very first space-bound hardware out of the atmosphere and into orbit, docking with the International Space Station (ISS) the following morning. In recognition of the immense lift and significant contributions from the KMI team as well as the many partners, supporters, and friends who have participated in KMI’s journey over the last (nearly) 5 years, I want to clearly and emphatically say: Thank you. 

Pursuing a mission of high technical complexity and logistical difficulty is not a path for the faint of heart. Our team of Space Rangers has shown their fortitude and dedication to the pursuit of this mission, culminating with the REACCH hardware that we built together right here in downtown Marquette, Michigan, now flying high above our heads in space.

The REACCH capture system is a highly adaptable mechanism designed to safely and securely grapple any number of different objects in orbit for the purposes of relocation, whether that be for debris removal, life extension, or in-space servicing. This bio-inspired technology combines the ability of octopus tentacles to conform to differing geometries with the ability of gecko feet to adhere and grip onto nearly any surface. We will be demonstrating REACCH’s capabilities aboard the ISS to showcase numerous captures of free-floating objects in microgravity, swapping out different surface materials to simulate different objects we will encounter in future operational missions with our full Laelaps spacecraft.

The REACCH technology has come a long way in the many years that it has been in development. It started first as a concept born out of the work of Professor David Barnhart of the University of Southern California, in partnership with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at the behest of DARPA. Since then, REACCH has progressed through countless iterations, revisions, and complete architectural overhauls, to the point where it is nearly unrecognizable compared to its original concept (see the pictures below). In the early stages of development, research of REACCH was paused and the concept was put on a (literal) shelf in 2018. In 2021, KMI met with Prof. Barnhart to discuss his research and just so happened to see the REACCH prototype sitting on that shelf behind him. In short order, we instituted a partnership to bring REACCH back to life and to advance it further into commercialization. Since executing that partnership three years ago, REACCH has advanced from a concept into a spaceborne demonstration aboard the ISS, with further hardware in development for a full space mission slated to launch in the next few years, anticipated in 2027.

Early REACCH concept, circa 2018 (USC).

ISS-bound REACCH hardware, in ISS Mockup Facility at NASA JSC in 2024 (KMI).

As mentioned at the top, getting hardware into space is a difficult task (or, at least, getting hardware into space that does anything productive is). Significant progress toward this goal started with our brilliant grant-writing team drafting polished proposals to secure funding from the United States Space Force for further REACCH development. This was followed by securing approval and partnership from the ISS National Laboratory to operate on the station integrated with the Astrobee free-flyer platform. On the backs of the grant-writing team’s success came the necessity for the technical teams to show their skills and expertise. From the first REACCH funding win to the successful launch of this hardware, nearly three years and 10,000 person-hours were invested in getting this technology ready to go to space.

Through months of highly cerebral design and planning work followed by more months of hands-on application and prototype development, the technical teams at KMI showed their drive, passion, and dedication to the mission at hand by tackling countless challenges and overcoming numerous obstacles. Not only did they have to completely redesign and re-engineer the REACCH prototype to be more compatible with the specific mission constraints of operating onboard ISS and integrating with Astrobee, but this all had to be accomplished while staying within the bounds of the many requirements levied on the project, be it safety, operational, technical, material, or otherwise. Following the successful fabrication and assembly of the flight hardware, the ISS-bound REACCH unit had to go through numerous bouts of testing for fit and function, electromagnetic interference (EMI), acoustic output, and more. 

When the final contract was fully executed for this ISS National Lab-sponsored project, many recommended we plan for a much longer timeline prior to turning over hardware for launch, expecting complications to delay things out to at least two years. Our team built the flight unit, tested it thoroughly internally, validated it with the necessary external testing, and tracked and closed every required step in order to reach flight hardware handover in less than 12 months from the signing of that final contract. In addition to the pride I have in our team, this monumental achievement speaks to the incredible capability, immeasurable passion, and irrevocable devotion to keeping space clear for all that is shown by every single one of our Space Rangers.

Which brings us to launch. It is a strange feeling, handing over something that you and your closest colleagues have spent nearly a solid year building together, revising and refining, only to leave it sitting in a locked crate within a locked cage within a locked room of a locked building in Houston, Texas. And yet, stranger still, is waiting nearly five months afterward to watch that hardware ride a column of thunderous fire and smoke up into the stars, knowing that the next time you see it will be in the hands of an astronaut in perpetual freefall. The pride I felt, the emotions that soared, and the energy of our team as a whole as we watched that rocket ignite and climb into the sky is something that I can only describe as indescribable. I recognize that, someday, this sort of launch might become somewhat mundane to us. Whether it’s our tenth launch or our hundredth, at some point there will be a feeling of normalcy when our creations rise into the heavens. Yet the way we feel about this launch, our first launch, I suspect will remain with us even still.

Today is one of those rare days in our industry when we have a moment to step back, take a breath, and bask in the wonder of what we have created and how it might help change the world for the better. Tomorrow, surely (or even by the time you’re reading this column), it is back to work as we gear up to support the actual operations on station for which the hardware was built. But for now, I will conclude with this: To all the supporters, partners, sponsors, investors, colleagues, and community members who have followed along on our journey, I hope you are even a modicum as proud of this team as I am. The team we have brought together is intelligent, tenacious, adaptable, innovative, determined, resourceful, and mutually supportive - more so than I could have ever hoped. I could not be more proud of them, or more honored to help lead them. It is with great joy and enthusiasm that I look forward to the future of what we will continue to accomplish on the path to keeping space clear for all.

P.S. If you feel you haven’t suffered enough and would like to read even more of my writing, below you can learn more about REACCH and its future, what we will be testing on the ISS with Astrobee, and about the launch of SpaceX-31.

REACCH, the Robotic Space Octopus

Close-up visual of gecko adhesive, showing synthetic micro-wedges that enable Van der Waals forces for adhesion.

As mentioned in the full column above, REACCH is a capture system designed to interact with a variety of objects across a wide range of sizes, geometries, and surface materials. In this section, you can find a few more images showing REACCH in different capture configurations, as well as a bit more detail about how gecko adhesion works. Specifically though, I want to use this section to add a bit more about what comes next for REACCH. All too often it becomes very easy for us to focus only on the next big thing, and not necessarily pre-plan for the big thing beyond it. Part of what makes the space industry difficult is the need to overcome that very human tendency of near-term big-thing focus and instead think many steps ahead, such that before we’ve even launched our first round of hardware we are already starting to develop the next round.

 

 ISS-bound REACCH hardware during fit & function testing at NASA ARC in 2024 (KMI).

 

What that means is that the next phase of REACCH has already begun, including further research into optimizing the kinematics of the tentacle to give us better motion control with (ideally) less cost, complexity, and power requirements. Many strides have already been made, though not all are shareable as of this writing, but the big push for progress will come after we begin downlinking data from our ops on ISS. That is where we will really start to identify what areas of REACCH still need improvement, and of equal importance, what areas of REACCH can stand to be reduced in effectiveness in order to better strike the balance between complexity and capability. As the old saying goes, anyone can build a bridge that doesn’t fail. It takes some fine engineering though to build a bridge that just barely doesn’t fail.

The takeaway from that statement shouldn’t be a fear of bridges (apologies if it is) but instead that engineering serves to maximize the outcome we can achieve with the minimum amount of resources. It is through means like this that our future Laelaps spacecraft will be able to capture and relocate numerous space objects in its lifetime, rather than only taking on one object per spacecraft. As it is with Laelaps, so it is with REACCH, in that we are developing improvements and optimizations to better prepare it for the harsh environment of outer space, where it will need to survive thermal cycling, vacuum exposure, atomic oxygen degradation, radiation, and more, all while maintaining peak performance capabilities. The plan as it stands is for Laelaps to launch in 2027, carrying a fully equipped 8-tentacle REACCH payload, ready to secure and relocate numerous objects to help clear the path for continued operations in space.

ISS & Astrobee - What’s the Big Deal?

Operating any hardware on the ISS is an achievement, and it provides a very unique environment for study. To survive operations in outer space, there are numerous environmental characteristics to prepare for, including vacuum exposure, thermal cycling, and microgravity. The first two are easy to simulate on the ground, using what is known as a TVAC chamber (literally, thermal vacuum chamber). The latter, however, is extremely difficult to simulate terrestrially, and what options do exist (parabolic flight, advanced robotics, neutral buoyancy, etc) are generally limited in either the duration that can be achieved or the specific changes needed to survive that particular environment. The ISS, on the other hand, allows access to perpetual microgravity, wherein we can continue to test in a free-floating environment for hours at a time.

To take that one step further, we are also leveraging the phenomenally useful Astrobee platform, which is a set of 12-inch cube-shaped robots that are kept up on ISS and are able to freely locomote around inside the station by using fans to push air out of the different faces of the cube. REACCH will be installed into the Astrobee (as shown below) and will fly around inside the ISS in much the same way that Laelaps will eventually fly around in the full space environment. This will allow a demonstration as well as a detailed physics study of the manner in which two free-floating objects interact with each other when one attempts to capture the other using REACCH. Obtaining details of these dynamics will allow us to better understand and characterize the motion profile that REACCH executes on captures, and better optimize it for objects of different geometries and sizes. This will help inform further iterations of REACCH as we continue to advance the technology toward full space demonstration aboard our Laelaps spacecraft in the coming years.

 

REACCH Fit and Function 2, May 2024 NASA Ames (KMI).

 

The History of SpaceX-31 (Yes I know it only launched a few days ago, just let me have this)

Our REACCH hardware launched to ISS onboard SpaceX-31 on November 5th, 2024 (well, it was November 4th in Eastern time but November 5th in UTC, which is the time ISS operates on). SpX-31 was a commercial resupply services mission, operated by SpaceX on their Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. The capsule containing our hardware was a Cargo Dragon capsule, serial number C208, which was carried to space aboard a Falcon 9 Block 5 booster, serial number B1088. This was the fifth flight of that capsule, and the first flight of the booster. The whole contraption launched from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. There have been numerous launches from LC-39A since it was constructed in the 1960s, but there are a few specific missions from that same launchpad that I’d like to highlight.

July 16, 1969: Apollo 11, which took humanity to the moon aboard a Saturn V rocket (NASA).

November 8, 1984: STS-51A, which took KMI advisor Dr. Anna Fisher to orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (NASA).

May 30, 2020: SpaceX Demo-2, which brought NASA astronauts to the ISS in the first crewed orbital flight from U.S. soil since the final Space Shuttle mission in 2011 (NASA).

Notably, KMI Space Rangers Rose Schopfer and Mike Lundy were fortunate enough to be able to travel down to watch the launch of SpX-31 in person, and were even able to link up with Dr. Fisher to watch the launch with her. Having all of our team members together virtually while Rose, Mike, and Dr. Fisher were in person together, and hearing her stories and perspective shared, there was certainly a palpable electric energy in the air shared amongst us all. I’ll leave it to them to share those stories in greater detail, but rest assured that it was both inspirational and humbling to have her involved in our launch, and it remains as such to have her supporting our continuing operations moving forward.

At the time of this writing, LC-39A has supported nearly 200 launches across Saturn V, Space Shuttle, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy. The fact that hardware we here at KMI designed, built, tested, and will soon operate launched from the very same pad as these many other historic launches is nothing short of awe-inspiring to me. I grew up fascinated by space and marveling at space launches, and to now be a part of one, irrevocably on that (thankfully) still-growing list, is a childhood dream come true. And while we may be but one very small part of that launch, and be nowhere near the worldwide significance of a crewed launch to the moon, just knowing for ourselves that we were there and we had a role that took our creation to the very same place that those giants once launched from makes it plenty significant to us.