The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is launching a five year program to build robots capable of repairing and upgrading satellites. The research agency will also develop spacecraft for moving the robots through space.

The US government and US companies together have over 400 satellites orbiting the earth at a distance of around 22,000 miles. However, the number of satellites is bound to surge in the coming years as the result of various government and the private sector initiatives. According to the program, the robots will “both provide increased resilience for the current U.S. space infrastructure and be the first concrete step toward a transformed space architecture with revolutionary capabilities.”

The increasing use of and resulting reliance on space-based technologies also gives rise to security threats that have been covered in a recent OODA Research Report.

Read more: The Pentagon is Investing in Space Robots to Repair Satellites