Starfish joins queue of companies looking to service satellites

Kent, Washington based Starfish Space has announced that they’ve raised a US$7 million funding round to help them build a fleet of space tugs to help with the growing issue of servicing and decommissioning satellites. The funding round was led by NFX and MaC Venture Capital, with participation from PSL Ventures, Boost VC, Liquid2 Ventures and Hypothesis. This follows an earlier US$500k round led by Boost VC The money is going towards assisting Starfish in developing the Otter space tug. The Otter is intended to be “an efficient and versatile satellite servicing vehicle” using electric propulsion that can capture and move objects in orbit. The Otter is targeted towards two key activities: extending the life of large and expensive geosynchronous satellites by being able to move them after their own propellant is exhausted, and decommissioning satellites at end of life. Decommissioning satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) has become an increasingly pressing concern, with NASA already calling it the “world’s largest garbage dump” with “millions of pieces of space junk flying in LEO.” This situation is only going to worsen as more and more companies and governments take advantage of falling launch costs to put competing SmallSat constellations in LEO. This potential crisis is being seen as an opportunity for other companies, and both Northrop Grumman’s MEV-2 and Tokyo-based Astroscale’s ELSA-d have already demonstrated capture capability with an eye to providing debris removal and on-orbit servicing. In an interview with SpaceNews in May, Starfish co-founder (and former Blue Origin flight science engineer) Trevor Bennet acknowledged these companies’ progress, and said that their tugs will be “significantly larger and more expensive” than the Otter. Starfish aims to make the Otter “small and affordable,” according to their site’s promotional material, as well as “highly autonomous.” To achieve the affordability and autonomous Otter that Starfish is promising, they’re putting a significant amount of their resources (and funding) into the CEPHALOPOD rendezvous, proximity operations and docking (RPOD) software. Starfish received funding for Space Force Pitch Day, and the software is currently being tested in orbit. A Starfish site post in May also pointed to CEPHALOPOD RPOD being used in demonstrations with Orbit Fab’s Tanker 1 mission, and GeekWire said that the companies were “also exploring further integration of CEPHALOPOD and Orbit Fab’s Spark RPOD hardware kit.” This technological partnership between the two companies may become significant, considering Orbit Fab’s bid to become the premiere refueling partner for geosynchronous on-orbit servicing, and has attracted the attention of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. Department of Defence. Besides CEPHALOPOD, however, Starfish is being very quiet about how they'll achieve this competitive price and technology advantage. In an email exchange with SpaceQ, a spokesperson for Starfish would only say that "what's novel is the design for our vehicle and the way it efficiently takes advantage of propulsion and other technologies." They would not speak further on the subject, admitting that the description is "intentionally vague" due to IP concerns. Still, investors expressed considerable confidence in Starfish and its Otter and CEPHALOPOD technologies. NFX General Partner Morgan Beller said that Starfish is “the perfect example of what happens when you have a brilliant experienced team and a vision that goes well beyond the competition.” Adrian Fenty, MaC Venture Capital’s Managing General Partner, said that “as space becomes more crowded and more regulated, we see a massive need for companies like Starfish to provide satellite services and de-orbiting. We believe the team at Starfish and their Otter space tug will be able to do this better than anyone else in the market thanks to their novel technology.” Austin Link, Co-Founder of Starfish Space — and Bennet’s former colleague at Blue Origin — said that Starfish is “now in a position to build on our early successes. It's an incredible joy to pursue this dream surrounded by the extraordinary people we have at Starfish, and we look forward to accelerating this pursuit.” To that end, Starfish said that the funding will allow them to expand their team, and they have already opened up several positions in the Kent, WA area.