In Orbit Service Manufacturing: Workshop Summary

The In-Orbit Service Manufacturing (IOSM) Workshop during the Space for Inspiration conference and in partnership with the Satellite Applications Catapult was focused on developing an understanding of what in-orbit servicing and manufacturing is, definition of what it embraces and what it doesn’t and crucially what ambition that Europe has.

26 participants represented the breadth of industry, academic and government organisations joined the workshop with additional speakers drawn from ESA to present the state of the art in additive manufacturing and associated technologies. The Catapult presented their assessment of the key challenges that IOSM presents, and an extended discussion was held both on the nomenclature used for what we call IOSM, and then further dove into topics such as what elements should or shouldn’t be included; a hot topic was whether the term in-orbit was the appropriate term for technologies and processes which may be performed on asteroids and planetary surfaces.

The outputs and outcomes were captured during the session and will be disseminated back to both the participants of this workshop as well as those who attend the Space for Inspiration event as a summary document. The future aim is to look to establish a pan-European working group to further define with space manufacturing and servicing is, what is needed to position Europe as a leader in the definition of standards and processes, and promote the capabilities the technologies that ESA members can offer.