Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space has won a three-year, $15 million contract from NASA for a mission aimed at doing up-close inspections of defunct satellites in orbit.
Such inspections, to be carried out using Starfish’s Otter spacecraft starting in 2027, could blaze a trail for even more ambitious missions involving the repair or removal of such satellites.
The mission is known as SSPICY, an acronym that stands for Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability. NASA awarded the Phase III Small Business Innovation Research contract after a study that provided Starfish and three other small businesses with funds to develop mission concepts. (The other three companies were Kayhan Space, Turion Space and Vast Space.)…