 Orbital ATK announced on March 13 that they are developing a new version of their satellite life extension vehicle that's going to add more flexibility to their customers who are interested in doing satellite resurfacing. This is your space pod for March 20, 2018. During a presentation at the satellite 2018 conference, company executives announced plans to develop the mission robotic vehicle and mission extension pods, which would handle station keeping for geostationary satellites that are running out of fuel. The new systems are based on the mission extension vehicle, or MEV, a satellite life extension vehicle that Orbital ATK currently offers. The MEV docks with a satellite and takes over maneuvering of that satellite, and including station keeping as well as relocating and disposal into graveyard orbits. Orbital ATK has been working on the program for several years and has done several physical tests of hardware and has even sold two of their MEV vehicles to IntelSat, the first of which is scheduled to launch later on this year. That MEV is going to dock with IntelSat-901 and is going to move it into another orbital slot, and the second MEV vehicle planned for launch in early 2020 will dock with another as yet unnamed IntelSat satellite and take over its station keeping at its current location. However, under the new approach, a mission robotic vehicle based on the MEV design will carry 10 to 12 mission extension pods. The mission robotic vehicle would approach a customer's satellite and use a robotic arm to attach a pod to that satellite. The pod would then take over station keeping and provide up to five years of additional life. The mission robotic vehicle and mission extension pods are intended to provide new solutions to customers that don't need all of the full-fledged capabilities of the mission extension vehicle. The pods have a shorter lifetime than the MEV and do not provide attitude control capabilities. The new system, though, designed to be ready for service in 2021 largely incorporates existing technology and the mission robotic vehicle itself is a version of the MEV, the mission extension vehicle, and the mission extension pods are actually based on Orbital ATK's S-Bassat small satellite bus. One new technology that would be needed for this would be the robotic arm and Orbital ATK is considering options from NASA and from Europe, although I'm not sure why not Canada, they seem to be the experts at robotic arms, but they have yet to make a decision on the specific technology. The robotic arm and pod technologies could open the door to do a lot more sophisticated satellite servicing in the future. And Wilson, who is the CEO of Space Logistics, which is a division that is marketing the whole satellite reservicing for Orbital ATK, he said that the pods could carry other technologies such as alternative communication payloads, which could be installed on host satellites, while the arm could use tools to perform basic repairs if there's any needed. So this could add a lot of new capabilities, and I think that this looks like a really cool idea, and there's a way to have one mission service multiple satellites instead of just one. So I think that this is a really cool thing, and I hope that they're able to progress forward with this. In any case though, be sure to check out our last live show we had Nima Shah on talking about the importance of arts and humanities in STEAM, in science, technology, education and math. So be sure to check out that show 11.11 that we had, and every live show that we have every Saturday at 1,800 coordinated universal time. Keep moving onwards and upwards everybody, and until the next time I see you guys, don't forget, add Astra to the stars.