Friends, this one stings a little. Starfish Space, the Washington startup that wants to be the tow truck and repair shop of low Earth orbit, has lost its first full-size Otter spacecraft. NASA and Starfish have both concluded the spacecraft can’t be recovered. 💔
What was Otter supposed to do?
The mission is called SSPICY, short for Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability, and yes, I love that name. It was a roughly $15 million NASA mission run by Starfish. The plan was for the Otter, a spacecraft about the size of an oven, to fly up close to several dead U.S. satellites in low Earth orbit and inspect them. That’s how NASA would learn what old space junk really looks like up close, which is the first step toward someday grabbing it and hauling it out of the way.
Otter was also packed with Starfish’s own technology flying together for the first time. Aviation Week lists an articulating robotic arm called Manta for pointing its thruster, a docking mechanism called Nautilus built to latch onto satellites that were never designed to be docked with, and computer-vision navigation and autonomous guidance software named Cetacean and Cephalopod. (Somebody at Starfish really loves the ocean, and I’m here for it. 🐙)
What went wrong
Otter launched on Oct. 1 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on a rideshare mission. As someone who has stood out in the California fog waiting on a Vandenberg launch, I always cheer for the little rideshare satellites tucked inside the fairing.
The start went well. Starfish says it made two-way contact, commanded the spacecraft and pulled down a good amount of data. Then, during commissioning (the early phase when a team switches systems on one by one and checks them out), contact was lost.
NASA says the troubleshooting traced the problem to the spacecraft’s fault protection system, the onboard software that’s supposed to spot problems and react to keep the spacecraft safe. Here it did the opposite: it wrongly kept the radio turned off. Starfish says the error was in the satellite bus, the basic spacecraft body, which came from a supplier called Astro Digital. With the radio off, nobody on the ground could get a word in, so Otter can’t be told to switch it back on.
Second time unlucky
This isn’t Starfish’s first rough start. Payload Space points out that in 2023 the company’s first small test satellite, Otter Pup 1, was released spinning wildly after a problem with the vehicle that carried it. Starfish’s engineers spent weeks fighting the tumble and got it back under control. This time there was no way back in.
Payload Space also notes it’s a tough stretch for NASA’s satellite-servicing efforts overall. It comes right after the attempt to boost the Swift observatory came up short, and I wrote about Swift’s fiery farewell this week.
Why I’m still optimistic 🌟
Starfish isn’t giving up, and neither am I. The company says it’s working with Astro Digital to fix the fault protection and tighten testing for future Otters, and that Starfish and NASA are looking at ways to meet SSPICY’s goals on other Starfish missions. According to GeekWire, more Otter missions are lined up, including a satellite disposal job for the Space Development Agency, two commercial servicing missions in geostationary orbit, and two missions for the U.S. Space Force. Meanwhile, its smaller Otter Pup 2 recently made a close approach to a target satellite, about 33 meters away according to Payload Space, and Starfish says it’s preparing for a docking attempt.
Space is hard, and one switched-off radio can end a mission. But every failure like this one gets written into the rules for the next flight. I’ll be watching for that docking attempt! 🚀
What do you think, friends: should cleaning up space junk be a bigger priority? Tell me in the comments!
— The Star Queen
Sources
- NASA-Funded SSPICY Mission Experiences Communications Loss (NASA Small Satellites blog, Nov. 3, 2026)
- Starfish spacecraft failure ends NASA satellite inspection mission (GeekWire)
- Starfish Loses Contact with Otter, Cutting SSPICY Short (Payload Space)
- NASA-Backed Starfish Space Mission Loses Contact With Otter Spacecraft (Aviation Week, Nov. 4, 2026)
- Starfish Space’s first Otter servicing spacecraft fails (SpaceNews)
Image: NASA. Astronauts servicing the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009, shown for context and not related to the Otter mission.