Starfish Space wins SDA contract to deorbit satellites

WASHINGTON — Starfish Space has won a contract from the Space Development Agency (SDA) to deorbit satellites in a missile-tracking and communications constellation, evidence that deorbiting services are moving into the mainstream.

The Seattle-based company announced Jan. 21 it secured a $52.5 million contract from the Space Development Agency to provide “deorbit as a service” for spacecraft in the agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, or PWSA, a low Earth orbit constellation. The PWSA includes Tracking Layer satellites for missile detection and Transport Layer satellites for communications.

Under the contract, Starfish will launch one of its Otter space tugs in 2027. The spacecraft will dock with a PWSA satellite that is unable to deorbit on its own, move it to a much lower orbit and then release it to enable faster reentry.

The contract covers deorbiting a single PWSA satellite but includes options to deorbit multiple additional spacecraft, said Trevor Bennett, chief executive of Starfish Space. Those operations would be performed by the same Otter spacecraft.

Bennett said the company won the award after completing a study contract for the agency in 2024 and 2025 that demonstrated the feasibility of satellite deorbiting. Starfish was one of several companies that conducted such studies.

“The study allowed them to explore a variety of different companies and see where they were,” he said. “They ultimately deemed that Starfish was in a position where it wasn’t just a PowerPoint presentation. It actually was an on-orbit capability that you could put into practice.”

He emphasized that the agency is purchasing a service, not the Otter spacecraft itself. Starfish will operate Otter, while the agency will select the satellite to be deorbited. “What SDA is purchasing at the end of the day is not a bunch of nuts and bolts or having to learn how to do this,” Bennett said. “They’re getting the thing that actually provides some value.”

Otter is designed to dock with unprepared spacecraft. Bennett said the PWSA satellites launched to date do not have docking mechanisms or other features intended to support rendezvous operations. Design information about the satellites, which are produced by multiple manufacturers, can be helpful but is not required.

“Any information that SDA is able to provide Starfish around the specific satellite they’re interested in will only improve the process,” he said. “But it doesn’t prevent the process if we don’t have it.”

The SDA contract adds to Starfish’s backlog, which includes awards from the U.S. Space Force for a satellite servicing mission, NASA for a satellite inspection mission, and Intelsat, now part of SES, to extend the life of a geostationary communications satellite. Bennett said the SDA award demonstrates the growing maturity of the satellite servicing market.

“This is not an R&D-type contract. This is truly a service contract,” he said. “That is a pretty cool step for them, showing the maturity of where they are in their contracting and the evolution of their constellation, and also for us, to be able to have a real market.”

Starfish is still demonstrating key technologies for the Otter spacecraft. Last year, the company conducted a proximity operations test with Impulse Space, using Starfish software to maneuver one Mira spacecraft built by Impulse to within about 1,250 meters of another Mira spacecraft.

Starfish also launched Otter Pup 2 last year, a spacecraft designed to attach to another satellite in low Earth orbit. Bennett said testing continues to go well, but the company has not announced any docking milestones.

He said demand for satellite servicing remains strong. “I think there’s more demand than what we can fly Otters at the moment,” Bennett said. “Our goal as a company is to be successful with these first few and continue to build out that pipeline.”