Obruta Space Solutions isn’t seeking to become a household name. They aren’t building launchers, and they aren’t building satellites, and founders Kevin Stadnyk and Kirk Hovell aren’t making grandiose claims about Mars.
They’re building a company focused on the burgeoning in-orbit satellite servicing and maintenance market, but unlike companies like Northrup Grumman, MDA and Starfish, they also aren’t producing mission extension vehicles to move, service, or refuel satellites, either.
Instead, they’re focused on a simple goal: to provide an off-the-shelf device that will allow those maintenance vehicles to attach themselves to the satellites that they’re servicing. In an interview with SpaceQ, Stadnyk explained the approach.
A pivot to satellite servicing from debris removal
He explained that their current approach is actually a pivot from their original idea, which was space debris removal. Stadnyk and Hovell met at Carleton University working on space debris removal technology, and believed that commercializing space debris removal would be an important part of the current wave of space commercialization.
As they looked into the market, though, they realized that this original business might not be viable. Stadnyk said that space debris “is a great academic topic,” but that it’s a “tragedy of the commons” where no individual company has enough of an incentive to act on the problem. Companies looking to provide these services face the pressing question of “who’s going to pay for it?” and haven’t found an answer. He’s seeing that “pressure is being put on various governments to [create] incentives to deorbit space objects at the end of their life,” but at the moment there’s just not enough of a business case for a startup to be able to focus on this problem.
Stadnyk said that many companies that were focused on deorbiting are looking at other revenue-generating streams. So Stadnyk and Hovell decided to pivot their company to something that other companies will pay for: in-orbit satellite maintenance.
Componentization of satellites and “off the shelf” solutions
They also quickly realized, however, that it didn’t make sense to provide maintenance services either. It would be extremely difficult to compete against big players like Northrup Grumman or MDA, and impossible to compete against governmental agencies with billion-dollar budgets. Instead, they decided that they were going to facilitate these other companies by providing the hardware and software they need to accomplish their goals.
Stadnyk explained that part of their inspiration for this approach was the “Cubesat revolution,” which has not only made satellites much smaller, but has slowly made it so that each subsystem is componentized and productized. He said that unlike a decade ago, where satellite makers would have to build something like an attitude control or propulsion system on their own, there’s an ever-growing number of “off the shelf” subsystems that they can rely on. Currently, however, anyone looking to do satellite servicing, refueling or life extension has two choices: buy bespoke software and hardware systems or build them in-house. That would be long, expensive, and potentially unreliable.
Obruta is looking to fix that problem by creating an off-the-shelf solution that provides “rendezvous, proximity operations and docking” (or RPOD) capabilities. “It’s low cost,” said Stadnyk, adding that customers will be able to “plug it in and it’ll work, and there won’t be much integration hassle beyond that.” Their website describes it as “all the necessary hardware and software to enable on-orbit economy,” which includes everything from “asset inspection,” “life-extension,” “orbit relocation” and even “space station docking and orbital tourism.”
They also aren’t planning on either designing or building the actual docking interfaces. That was a deliberate choice by Stadnyk and Hovell. Stadnyk explained that they knew that bigger players would likely want to impose their standards for actual docking interfaces. He said that it meant that they were best off “not committing to any single docking interface.”
No matter which interface is being used, or even if it’s one satellite grappling another one instead of just docking with it, Obruta aims to provide off-the-shelf sensors, hardware, and software to make the connection happen.
Potential Clients and Potential Investors
When asked if they’d received interest from potential customers, Stadnyk said they had but couldn’t get into specifics. One interesting tidbit on their market research, however, came from an interview they did with the Catalyst accelerator, where Stadnyk and Hovell said that they were looking very closely at the American market, and focusing very specifically on American governmental clients.
When asked about Catalyst, Stadnyk said that they had “great conversations there in terms of what US governmental needs are.” He also suggested that the US Government could be a key potential customer for their business, as “a lot of the funding and ongoing capital being put into this industry segment is coming from the US government…that’s just kind of the fact that they’re the leading investors in space right now.”
Meanwhile, he admitted that “we don’t really see much commercial revenues happening right now.” It will come, and they’ve gotten interest, but the private players just aren’t there yet. The situation might change after they succeed in a demonstration mission, however, and Stadnyk said that they’re looking at late 2023 for that mission.
Yet, despite that, Stadnyk wants Obruta to remain a Canadian company. He said that they have received “great support from the Canadian government, through the Canadian Space Agency, as well as the National Research Council of Canada,” and that they aren’t keen on “uprooting and looking to leave the country.” Stadnyk granted, however, that they are expecting to have an American presence at some point.
As to investment, Stadnyk also couldn’t say much on the record, except that they are currently looking to close a pre-seed round, that they’ve been getting some angel interest in both Canada and the United States, and that they’re “optimistic they’ll be able to close it” despite current market volatility. That will carry them through to the test, though they’ll need to do more funding to make the test happen.
As well as private capital sources, they’re also looking at attempting to secure funding for the testing through an upcoming CSA Space Technology Demonstration Announcement of Opportunity.