Starfish will launch its second Otter Pup demo mission next month—a key step to prove out the startup’s RPO tech in orbit ahead of a trio of missions in 2026.
Mission details: Otter Pup 2 is expected to launch aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-14 rideshare mission. The Otter Pup 2 spacecraft will attempt to dock with a D-Orbit ION sat in LEO by the end of 2025 — building on an unexpected collaboration between the two companies during the first mission (more on that below).
“The spacecraft [that Otter Pup 2 will dock with] was not designed for this. The interaction with the client is, ‘Where are you going to be? And we’ll get there,’” Starfish cofounder Trevor Bennett told Payload. “This Otter Pup mission is really a precursor to a lot of things we want to do in space.”
Lessons learned: Starfish’s first Otter Pup mission, which launched in 2023 aboard Transporter-8, spun out of control. This happened after Otter Pup separated from the rocket onboard an OTV from Launcher, which was also supposed to be its docking partner. After about six weeks, Starfish engineers stopped the spinning.
An anomaly with an Exotrail thruster ruled out another docking mission attempt. In April 2024, however, Otter Pup got within 1 km (0.6 miles) of a D-Orbit ION spacecraft, and snapped pictures.
The Otter Pup 2 mission will have a few key differences, Bennett said:
- The spacecraft will be mounted directly to the rocket, eliminating the need to rely on an OTV and allowing Otter Pup to separate solo.
- Otter Pup 2 will also include electric propulsion thrusters from French startup ThrustMe.
What’s next: “Otter Pup is trying to demonstrate for ourselves that our algorithms—our paradigm that we believe at Starfish—is scalable,” Bennett said. “It helps confirm…that this is an industry that is capable and possible. We can start building infrastructure out, and industry can start relying on it to exist.”
Starfish is set to fly three missions with Otter Pup’s big brother—dubbed Otter—next year.
- SSC awarded Starfish a $37.5M contract last year to build an Otter for national security missions.
- NASA tapped Starfish for its SSPICY mission to inspect space debris in LEO, with a contract value of $15M.
- Intelsat is partnering with Starfish to use an Otter to extend the life of a satellite in GEO.
