Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space has won a three-year, $15 million contract from NASA for a mission aimed at doing up-close inspections of defunct satellites in orbit.
Such inspections, to be carried out using Starfish’s Otter spacecraft starting in 2027, could blaze a trail for even more ambitious missions involving the repair or removal of such satellites.
The mission is known as SSPICY, an acronym that stands for Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability. NASA awarded the Phase III Small Business Innovation Research contract after a study that provided Starfish and three other small businesses with funds to develop mission concepts. (The other three companies were Kayhan Space, Turion Space and Vast Space.)
Taking care of orbital debris is a key component of NASA’s Space Sustainability Strategy. Orbital debris mitigation and satellite servicing are also key parts of the business model for Starfish, a five-year-old startup that was founded by two veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, Trevor Bennett and Austin Link.
“We are excited to expand our partnership with NASA, building on our shared commitment to advancing in-space manufacturing and assembly capabilities,” Bennett said today in a news release. “It’s an honor for Starfish to lead the first commercial debris inspection mission funded by NASA. We look forward to collaborating on this and future satellite servicing missions to enable a new paradigm for humanity in space.”
The Otter spacecraft is about the size of an oven, not including its solar arrays. It’s designed to approach, inspect and potentially dock with other satellites. Otter makes use of an electric propulsion system, a navigation system called Cetacean, an autonomous guidance software platform called Cephalopod, and a docking system called Nautilus..
During the SSPICY mission, Otter will visit and inspect multiple U.S.-owned defunct satellites that have been cleared to be approached. Otter will come within hundreds of meters (yards) of each satellite to gather key information about its spin rate, its spin axis and the current conditions of its surface materials. But it will stop short of docking.
Bo Naasz, senior technical lead for in-space servicing, manufacturing and assembly in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said the mission is designed to advance commercial capabilities for servicing satellites that need assistance — or for the safe disposal of satellites that are beyond saving.
“In-space inspection helps us characterize the physical state of a satellite, gather data on what may leave spacecraft stranded, and improve our understanding of fragmentations and collisions, a difficult but critical factor in a sustainable space operating environment,” Naasz said.
This may be the first commercial space debris inspection mission funded by NASA, but it’s not the first such contract won by Starfish Space. In May, the U.S. Space Force awarded Starfish a $37.5 million contract to use Otter for a docking mission that would provide two years of enhanced maneuverability for national space assets in orbit. And in June, Starfish signed a contract with Intelsat to provide on-orbit life extension services to a geostationary satellite beginning in 2026.
Starfish put its technologies to their first orbital test during the company’s Otter Pup demonstration mission, which was launched in June 2023 . That mission ran up against a series of challenges but ended up showing how Starfish’s orbital maneuvering system could indeed be employed to rendezvous with other satellites.
https://ift.tt/hQ9bja5 September 26, 2024 at 01:42AM GeekWire
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