A company developing "cosmic petrol stations" to extend the lives of satellites and enable missions to travel further said it hoped they would be in space by 2027.
Jacob Geer, managing director at Orbit Fab UK, said: "Docking a spacecraft in space to enable fuel to be transferred from one to another hasn't been done before.""We're trying to change that here by making sure that any satellite that goes up to space has a fuelling port on it, a bit like in your car, and then we can go up with our robotic interface and refuel that spacecraft, so it can carry on doing its job," he said.
Fluid System Engineer Omar Raj said the process would be "like when you go and refuel your car at the petrol station".The process would take roughly four hours to complete, he said.