Starfish Space

Starfish Space is a developer of orbital autonomous vehicles for the provision of in-space transportation and maintenance services. The company uses proximity operations software and a combination of orbital mechanics and low-thrust electric propulsion systems to perform satellite servicing missions, including satellite recovery, relocation, de-orbit, and life extension missions. The company is developing satellite servicing vehicles for use in geosynchronous orbit and low-Earth orbit.

Starfish Space was founded in 2018 by Austin Link and Trevor Bennett. The name "Starfish" comes from the Starfish species, known as a "keystone species" of their habitat, and reflects the company's mission to help maintain the ecosystem of the growing space industry, including its long-term viability for human expansion.

Starfish Space's first autonomous satellite servicing vehicle, named The Otter, is developed to conduct life extension missions in geosynchronous orbit or to de-orbit satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Otter is developed to help satellite operators extend the service life of existing satellites and help declutter specific orbits. The Otter uses guidance and control software developed by Starfish Space, with binocular computer vision for navigation, and includes a docking device to allow the vehicle to adhere to any flat service.

The first Otter satellite servicing vehicle to be developed and sent into orbit for a test mission was named the Otter Pup. The demonstration vehicle rode upon a Launcher Orbiter 3 space tug, which rode on a SpaceX Falson 9 rocket. Once in orbit, the Otter Pup was intended to deploy from the orbiter and attempt a rendezvous and dock with the spacecraft.

However, the first demonstration almost led to a disaster. The Otter Pup was part of a Launcher space tug glitch, where the commanders aboard the Orbiter SN3 Launcher, shortly after reaching low Earth orbit, made the decision to emergency deploy all onboard payloads after the space tug began to rapidly tumble. The Otter Pup was sent spinning itself, at a rotation rate in excess of almost one full rotation per second. The rotation rate slowed with time, but engineers at Starfish Space also managed to use the craft's magnetic torque rods to essentially "push off" from Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field and recover the Otter Pup from its tumble.

During the procedure, the Otter Pup further experienced low-power events, which pushed it to the brink of failure, before it was able to reorient and recharge itself. With the craft recovered, Starfish Space set its sights on looking for another satellite to fill in as the mission's target and to demonstrate the capabilities of the craft. The original mission called for the Otter Pup to reattach to the Orbiter SN3, but that was out of the question after the anomaly the space tug experienced.

Part of the Otter vehicle is the Cephalopod autonomous trajectory planning software platform. The software is designed to enable in-orbit satellite servicing, proximity operations, and spacecraft de-orbiting missions. The software has won AFWERX technology contracts to continue its development, especially as its use could be extended outside the Otter service vehicle, offering a mature technology to support government and commercial servicing missions.

Another component of the Otter service vehicle is the Cetacean onboard relative navigation software. This software is developed for proximity operations and to determine the relative state between two spacecraft. The software uses machine vision image processing and navigation filter structures to blend machine vision measurements with a combination of sensor types to enable flight software and hardware modularity. This is to offer the relative position, velocity, attitude, and pose and is designed to work with sensors, including various cameras, LiDAR, RADAR, GPS, star trackers, and inertial measurement units.

The Nautilus capture mechanism is another part of the Otter service vehicle developed to capture satellites and debris of surface material that lack a prebuilt docking interface. The device is developed to adhere to a broad set of capture surfaces, have multi-mission reuse capability, and have a multi-year operational life. The mechanism uses a hybrid electrostatic with gecko-like adhesives to provide higher connective forces.