Starfish House has confirmed that its first full-scale Otter satellite tv for pc servicing automobile is full and assigned to a buyer mission, marking the Seattle-area firm’s shift from know-how demonstrations to operational service.
The spacecraft is scheduled to launch no sooner than October 2026 on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare, a devoted Falcon 9 mission to sun-synchronous orbit from Vandenberg House Drive Base.
The corporate disclosed the milestone on September 23 throughout an trade occasion on the Seattle Aquarium.
After commissioning in orbit, the primary Otter will fly NASA’s Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Functionality mission (SSPICY).
The $15 million Section III Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis award, issued in 2024 and managed via NASA Ames’ Small Spacecraft Know-how program, funds shut approaches to a number of U.S.-owned defunct satellites in low Earth orbit.
Otter is predicted to shut to inside tons of of meters of every goal and start gathering spin charge, spin-axis, and surface-condition information in 2027. NASA has framed the flight as the primary agency-funded industrial particles inspection mission and a precursor to later seize, restore, or disposal work.
“That is the second Otter turns into actual,” co-founder Austin Hyperlink stated. “It’s not one thing we’re designing for the long run. The primary Otter is constructed, it has a buyer and a mission, and it’s going to area.”
Based in 2019 by Hyperlink and Trevor Bennett, each former Blue Origin flight-sciences engineers, Starfish has spent a number of years attempting to make rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking reasonably priced sufficient for routine industrial use.
Otter is a compact electric-propulsion servicer, roughly oven-sized, designed for all times extension and end-of-life disposal. Its structure is constructed round three in-house methods: CETACEAN computer-vision navigation, CEPHALOPOD autonomous steerage and management, and the Nautilus seize machine, which is meant to connect to an unprepared flat floor quite than a devoted docking fixture.
That final level is central to the enterprise case, given most satellites already in orbit had been by no means designed to be serviced.
The corporate has already flown pathfinders. Otter Pup 1 launched in 2023, recovered from a high-rate tumble after its switch tug failed, misplaced its chemical thruster, and nonetheless accomplished a roughly one-kilometer rendezvous with a D-Orbit ION automobile.
Otter Pup 2 launched on Transporter-14 in June 2025 and has since been working towards a docking try after its unique D-Orbit goal was withdrawn; Starfish later chosen Gilmour House’s ElaraSat as a substitute and has been conducting relative-navigation operations.
A separate 2025 collaboration with Impulse House, Remora, demonstrated autonomous rendezvous to about 1,250 meters utilizing Starfish software program on a Mira tug.
These flights sit behind a rising contract guide. Starfish holds offers with Intelsat for geostationary life extension, House Methods Command for dynamic area operations in GEO, and the House Improvement Company for disposal of Proliferated Warfighter House Structure satellites in LEO. Extra Otters are deliberate for these clients.
The primary automobile on Transporter-18 is the NASA inspection flight, after which Starfish says it’s going to put together the identical structure for industrial work.
“Humanity’s ambitions in area are rising, however the infrastructure to help these ambitions remains to be in its infancy,” Bennett stated.
“We constructed Otter as a result of we consider spacecraft ought to be serviceable after they launch. If we will make that routine, it opens up a completely totally different manner of designing, working and sustaining spacecraft, and that’s the future Starfish is working towards.”
Lead Picture: Starfish House.
The submit Starfish House’s first Otter servicing automobile slated for Transporter-18 appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.