---
title: "An oven-sized spacecraft is heading off to inspect dead satellites for NASA"
url: https://badiyaa.com/starfish-space-otter-launch-nasa-sspicy-dead-satellite-inspection/
published: 2026-10-12T09:58:00+01:00
modified: 2026-10-12T07:51:28+01:00
section: Science
publisher: Badiyaa
---

# An oven-sized spacecraft is heading off to inspect dead satellites for NASA

Starfish Space's first full-size Otter launched on October 1. Its NASA mission is to fly up to defunct satellites and check how they are tumbling.

Low Earth orbit is getting crowded, and not only with working satellites. Thousands of dead ones are still up there, tumbling silently, and nobody can remove them safely without first knowing exactly how they are moving. A small spacecraft that launched on October 1 is going to find out.

Starfish Space, a startup based near Seattle, sent its first full-scale Otter vehicle into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, as one of 130 payloads on the Transporter-18 rideshare mission. Roughly the size of a kitchen oven, Otter separated a little over an hour after liftoff and powered up.

## What it will do

Otter’s first job is a NASA contract called SSPICY, short for Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability, worth $15 million over three years. Once it is commissioned, Otter will rendezvous with a series of defunct US-owned satellites whose operators have agreed to the visits, and study them up close: how fast they spin, around which axis, and what condition their surfaces are in.

That information sounds dry, but it is the missing step in cleaning up orbit. You cannot grab, repair or deorbit a satellite tumbling end over end unless you know its motion precisely. NASA’s goal is to help build a commercial industry that can do exactly that.

The mission will also test something unusual. Otter uses electric propulsion, which is efficient but gentle, for its close approaches, a role usually left to stronger chemical thrusters. If it works, small inspection craft could visit more targets on less fuel.

## Why it matters

Starfish co-founder Trevor Bennett called SSPICY the first commercial debris inspection mission funded by NASA, and said success means “to actually go and provide this commercial inspection service on a number of these different spacecraft”. The company has lined up more work behind it: a satellite disposal job for the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency, two servicing missions for the US Space Force and two commercial missions in geostationary orbit.

The road here has not been smooth. Starfish’s first small prototype, an Otter Pup, fell short of docking with its target, though it proved the company’s tracking system; a second Pup launched in 2025. Full-scale Otter is the first test of the complete system.

The next milestone is commissioning, after which Otter begins its first approach. If it can circle a dead satellite, measure it and move on to the next, orbital clean-up stops being a slide in a pitch deck and becomes a service.

## Further reading

- [Space debris — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris)

- [On-orbit satellite servicing — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-orbit_satellite_servicing)

- [Starfish Space — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Space)

- [Low Earth orbit — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit)

*Image: NASA, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons*

*This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](/editorial-policy/).*