Research presented at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City examined the SDAW Mothership Architecture, a concept designed for responsive SmallSat sustainment through micro-servicer swarms.
The research addresses the challenge of sustaining the mega-constellation era in low Earth orbit (LEO). As LEO has transitioned into critical global infrastructure, sustainability is no longer guaranteed by launch activity alone, but requires the ability to service, repair, and responsibly dispose of assets at scale.
Data indicates there were over 7,500 operational satellites in LEO in 2024, with projections suggesting more than 50,000 satellites within a decade. Additionally, the environment faces challenges from over 1,500 trackable fragments from a 2021 Russian ASAT test and more than 1,700 Starlink avoidance maneuvers.
A significant servicing gap exists because current architectures like MEV, OSAM-1, and ClearSpace-1 are single-client and single-target models. These existing systems rely on proprietary fixtures that exclude most SmallSat platforms, leaving a lack of persistent, multi-client servicing infrastructure at a constellation scale.
