Animation showing a possible interoperability application in orbit of payload deployment and retrieval operations with ESA’s reusable Space Rider.

Space Rider is a versatile uncrewed robotic laboratory about the size of two minivans. This video shows operations of how Space Rider could fly to an orbital platform and deliver payloads using a robotic arm as well as retrieving other payloads to return them to Earth. In the near future platforms orbiting Earth could allow for cheap and efficient experimentation and research in the low Earth-orbit economy. Whereas Space Rider could stay in orbit for two months, by delivering payloads to orbital platforms like this the hardware could stay in orbit for as long as needed and also be retrieved and returned to Earth, allowing for manufacturing in space, to benefit research in pharmaceutics, biomedicine, biology and physical science.

The animation uses some artistic license to show how the operations could be carried out. In reality for example the rendezvous between Space Rider and the orbital platform would require Space Rider to arrive from a lower orbit.

At the end of its mission, Space Rider will return to Earth with its payloads and land on a runway to be unloaded and refurbished for another flight.