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With NASA’s backing, Starfish Space is getting ready for the orbital debut of its flagship Otter spacecraft

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With NASA’s backing, Starfish Space is getting ready for the orbital debut of its flagship Otter spacecraft

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space is ready for the first launch of its full-size Otter space servicing vehicle, following two orbital tests of scaled-down prototypes.

Otter is due to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base no earlier than Oct. 1, riding into orbit alongside other payloads on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 satellite rideshare mission. The 660-pound (300-kilogram) spacecraft, roughly the size of a kitchen oven (plus solar arrays), will demonstrate technologies for inspecting inoperable satellites during NASA’s $15 million Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability mission (SSPICY).

“This is the moment Otter becomes real,” Starfish co-founder Austin Link said today in a news release. “It’s no longer something we’re designing for the future. The first Otter is built, it has a customer and a mission, and it’s going to space.”

After it separates from its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and undergoes commissioning, the spacecraft will maneuver to approach and observe multiple satellites up close.

“We have a series of candidates that we can go to,” Starfish’s other co-founder, Trevor Bennett, told GeekWire. “We’ve actually studied a number of these satellites as potential candidates, and those will be selected once we’re in orbit. … These are spacecraft that are in family with satellites that NASA would be interested in servicing, and by being decommissioned satellites, there is no concern about trying to maintain the operational mission while we do our mission.”

Insights gained during the SSPICY mission will be applied to future missions that would involve docking with other satellites. Otter is built to service satellites for extended operations, or to dispose of them if they’re no longer operable.


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