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Starfish Space’s first Otter spacecraft goes into orbit

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rising into blue sky
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket rises from its California launch pad, sending 130 payloads into orbit. (Credit: SpaceX via X)

Starfish Space’s first full-scale Otter satellite servicing vehicle went into orbit today, marking a milestone for the Tukwila, Wash.-based startup.

The Otter spacecraft was among 130 payloads launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Otter is roughly the size of a kitchen oven, with solar arrays that were folded up for launch.

Other payloads on the satellite rideshare mission, known as Transporter-18, included Cowboy Space’s first power-beaming satellite, a prototype for Google’s AI data-center constellation, and a NASA-funded probe that will track the energy released by galaxies and supernovas.

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Starfish Space gets set for debut of flagship spacecraft

Austin Link and Otter mockup at Seattle Aquarium celebration
Starfish Space co-founder Austin Link shows off a mockup of the Otter spacecraft at the Seattle Aquarium. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

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.”

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Founders on the tech frontier show off their gadgets

Carbon Robotics CEO Paul Mikesell talks about the LaserWeeder system with a satellite in the foreground. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
Carbon Robotics CEO Paul Mikesell talks about the LaserWeeder system with a satellite in the foreground. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Four founders of companies on the tech frontier got together this week at a Seattle conference for a show-and-tell about the hardware at the heart of their businesses. And like any good show-and-tell, their talks touched on strategy as well as gadgetry.

For example, consider the laser-powered weed zapper pioneered by Seattle-based Carbon Robotics. The LaserWeeder system takes advantage of optical sensors and artificial intelligence to identify and target the weeds among the crops as the robotic rig is pulled through a field. Carbon Robotics’ founder and CEO, Paul Mikesell, held up one of the LaserWeeder’s scanners during Monday’s DeepTech session at the downtown office of K&L Gates.

“We have it set up so this camera can see exactly what the laser shooting this way is going to hit, and every time we turn on that laser, the same pixel area in the camera is going to explode and blow up,” he said. “This device reminds me of a lot of science and technology that we had to tackle, but also, there’s a lot of pain that went into this thing.”

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Starfish sets sights on new target for satellite docking

Illustration: Otter Pup 2 satellite in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite in orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Eleven months after launch, Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite is finally kicking its test mission into high gear, closing in for a rendezvous with a newly designated target.

If all goes according to plan, Otter Pup 2 will dock with Australia-based Gilmour Space’s ElaraSat satellite sometime in the next few months. ElaraSat became the new target after earlier plans to connect with a D-Orbit ION satellite were scrubbed for undisclosed reasons.

Trevor Bennett, one of the founders of Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space, said ElaraSat was launched on the same SpaceX satellite rideshare mission that sent Otter Pup 2 into orbit last June. Gilmour Space was “more than willing and excited to jump on and do something a little bit ambitious and crazy with us,” he told me.

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Starfish Space raises $110M for satellite servicing

Illustration: Starfish Space's Otter in geostationary Earth orbit with Earth in background
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter satellite servicing vehicle in geostationary Earth orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space says it has raised about $110 million in a funding round that will help the company execute its first satellite servicing missions and scale up operations for more business.

The Series B round was led by Point72 Ventures. Activate Capital and Shield Capital were co-leaders of the round. Additional major participants included Industrious Ventures and NightDragon. The round also drew support from several existing Starfish investors (NFX, Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures and PSL Ventures) as well as new investors (Nomi Capital, Gaingels and Overlap Holdings).

The new capital adds to previous funding rounds announced in 2021, 2023 and 2024, and pushes Starfish’s total investment past the $150 million mark.

Starfish Space was founded in 2019 by engineers Austin Link and Trevor Bennett, two veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. The company has developed a space vehicle called Otter, which is designed to rendezvous and dock with other objects in orbit — either to maneuver them into a different orbit or guide them to safe disposal.

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Starfish doubles down on Space Force satellite servicing

Illustration: Otter spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit with Earth in background
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter spacecraft in geosynchronous Earth orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space has been awarded a $54.5 million contract to produce another Otter satellite servicing spacecraft for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command.

The deal, announced this week, builds on a $37.5 million Space Systems Command contract that was awarded in 2024 through the Department of the Air Force’s Strategic Funding Increase program, or STRATFI. This new contract is funded through a Pentagon program called Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies, or APFIT. Starfish noted that the award is the only APFIT contract issued to a space company in the current cycle and ranks among the largest in the program’s history.

Austin Link, co-founder of Starfish Space, said his company was “proud to grow our partnership with the Space Force under the APFIT program.”

“APFIT is a key program in transitioning platforms like Otter from development to deployed capability,” Link said today in a news release. “Through dynamic space operations and autonomous augmented maneuver, we enable the Space Force to sustain critical space assets, increase resilience and maintain operational flexibility across evolving mission demands.”

Like the earlier contract, the new one calls on Starfish to provide an Otter spacecraft for dynamic space operations in geosynchronous Earth orbit. Delivery is scheduled for 2028, with an option for two years of operational support.

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Starfish will set up disposal service for military satellites

Illustration: Starfish Space's Otter spacecraft near another satellite in orbit
An artist’s conception shows an Otter spacecraft in proximity to another satellite. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Starfish Space has secured a $52.5 million contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency to dispose of military satellites at the end of their operational lives.

The Tukwila, Wash.-based startup says it’s the first commercial deal ever struck to provide “deorbit-as-a-service,” or DaaS, for a satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. In this case, the constellation is the Pentagon’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which provides global communications access and encrypted connectivity for military missions. The contract calls for Starfish Space to launch the satellite disposal service in 2027.

“This is not research and development. This is an actual service, in a structure that allows that service to scale for this constellation, for an entire industry,” Starfish Space co-founder Trevor Bennett told me. He said the arrangement validates the Space Development Agency’s approach to building and maintaining its constellation, and also validates “the path that we can take with the industry at large.”

Starfish is developing a spacecraft called Otter that would be able to capture other satellites, maneuver them into different orbits, release them and then move on. In a deorbiting scenario, Otter would send the target satellite into a trajectory for atmospheric re-entry that wouldn’t pose a risk to other orbital assets.

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Space startups team up for a novel satellite meetup

Mira spacecraft in orbit with Earth's disk in background
A sign on Impulse Space’s Mira spacecraft in orbit reads “How’s My Orbital Maneuvering?” (Impulse Space Photo)

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space and California-based Impulse Space say they’ve successfully demonstrated an in-space satellite rendezvous during a mission that handed over control of an Impulse Mira spacecraft to Starfish’s guidance and navigation system.

The demonstration was code-named Remora, in honor of a fish that attaches itself to other marine animals. Operation Remora was added to Mira’s agenda for Impulse Space’s LEO Express 2 mission, which was launched in January. Impulse and Starfish waited until the Mira spacecraft completed its primary satellite deployment tasks for LEO Express 2. Then they spent several weeks monitoring the maneuvers for Remora.

“About a month ago, we concluded the major steps here,” Starfish co-founder Trevor Bennett told me. “Since then, we’ve been getting data down and understanding the full story. And the full story is incredible.”

Remora was kept under wraps until today, primarily because both companies wanted to make sure that the demonstration actually worked as planned. “There was never a guarantee that there would be an outcome here,” Bennett explained. “And so what we wanted to do is talk about it when there was something to talk about.”

Bennett said the demonstration showed that Starfish’s software suite for guidance, navigation and control could be used on a different company’s satellite to make an autonomous approach to another spacecraft in orbit.

“Remora became definitely a first for us, in terms of being able to allow a whole new vehicle platform to autonomously do this full mission, all the way in and through,” he said. “Basically, we had no operator commands necessary for the vehicle to fly itself all the way down to 1,200 meters, take a bunch of pictures and then autonomously egress back out to further distances.”

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Starfish’s second spacecraft launched for docking test

Illustration: Otter Pup approaching spacecraft in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Otter Pup 2 (at left) approaching its target satellite. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Starfish Space’s second Otter Pup spacecraft went into Earth orbit today, marking the first step in what the Seattle-area startup hopes will be a successful demonstration of the vehicle’s ability to dock with other satellites.

Otter Pup, which is about the size of a microwave oven, was one of 70 payloads that hitched a ride to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter-14 rideshare mission. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:25 p.m. PT.

Minutes after stage separation, SpaceX reported that the rocket’s reusable first-stage booster made a successful touchdown on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. Later, SpaceX confirmed that Otter Pup separated successfully from the Falcon 9’s upper stage.

“Launch is an exciting milestone for Otter Pup 2, placing the satellite into low Earth orbit so it can work towards its mission: docking with another satellite and validating core Starfish technologies along the way,” Starfish Space, which is headquartered in Tukwila, Wash., said in a post-launch posting to X / Twitter. “If successful in these goals, Otter Pup 2 will bring us closer to an interactive future in orbit, shifting the paradigm for what humanity can accomplish as we venture out into the universe.”

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Starfish gets set for second satellite docking attempt

Illustration: Otter Pup approaching spacecraft in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Otter Pup 2 (at left) approaching its target satellite. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Two years after its first space mission literally took a turn for the worse, Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space is getting ready for a second test mission aimed at having its Otter Pup spacecraft dock with another satellite in orbit.

Otter Pup 2 is due for launch from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base as early as next month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, as part of the Transporter-14 rideshare mission.

Starfish Space co-founder Trevor Bennett told me that the Otter Pup 2 demonstration mission will be “a major step, to return to flight and have a spacecraft do a really complex mission, which is to go rendezvous and then ultimately capture an unprepared spacecraft.”

The goals of the mission are similar to the original objectives for the first orbital Otter Pup test in 2023, in which the spacecraft was set to conduct proximity operations and link up with a space tug.

That plan had to be changed when Otter Pup 1 was sent into a difficult-to-control spin during its deployment. After months of maneuvering, Starfish conducted limited testing of its satellite rendezvous system but had to forgo doing an on-orbit docking.

Bennett said Starfish has made upgrades in hardware as well as software for Otter Pup 2. For example, the company is using a different electric propulsion system, provided by ThrustMe. “The major difference is, now we have software and capabilities that could fly on multiple vehicles, not just on Otter Pup,” he said.

Otter Pup, which is about the size of a microwave oven, is designed to demonstrate the technologies that will be used on Starfish’s full-size Otter satellite servicing vehicles. Such vehicles are being built to link up with satellites on a regular basis — to refuel and service them for extended missions, or deorbit them for safe disposal at the end of their missions. Starfish has won tens of millions of dollars in contracts to execute Otter satellite docking missions next year for Intelsat, the U.S. Space Force and NASA.

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