A U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) experiment intended to demonstrate the feasibility of refueling satellites in space is significantly over budget and could be cancelled if the cost goes any higher, according to government and industry sources. DARPA awarded a $100 million contract for the Orbital Express demonstration to Boeing Phantom Works in 2002, but the cost of the project has since doubled, the sources said. The demonstration, which is slated to take place in September 2006, involves the construction of three small satellites, one of which was not part of the original $100 million cost estimate for the experiment. Plans for the experiment call for a satellite dubbed Astro to rendezvous with a second spacecraft known as NextSat Astro''s job would be to refuel the NextSat spacecraft. DARPA recently added a third microsatellite to the equation that would monitor the experiment and provide "space situational awareness for U.S. satellites deployed in geostationary orbits," according to budget justification materials recently submitted to Congress. Situational awareness is a military term that is used to describe techniques for keeping commanders informed of everything going on in a particular region.
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