For years, space architecture was treated mostly as a question of placement: where to put a spacecraft, and how reliably it could hold position. That framing is now too narrow. A growing number of missions need to reposition, retask, inspect, avoid threats, persist, support logistics or simply preserve options as the operating environment changes. The community is taking maneuver more seriously — and that shift is overdue.

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Michael J. Patterson is founder and chief engineer of Desert Works Propulsion and a former NASA Senior Technologist for In-Space Propulsion. He has four decades of electric propulsion experience, including leading NASA ion propulsion programs, such as...