Starfish Space<\/b> executed a successful in-space rendezvous between its Otter Pup satellite and D-Orbit<\/b>\u2019s ION SCV006 satellite. The companies announced the milestone on May 7. <\/p>\n
This was a backup mission for the Otter Pup, which faced a number of challenges on orbit. After launch deployment last year, the spacecraft fell into an uncontrollable rotation and teams worked for two months to stabilize the spacecraft. <\/p>\n
Otter Pup\u2019s original mission was to dock with another spacecraft. After the initial setbacks, Starfish Space decided to validate other core technologies with the rendezvous missions. Starfish Space and D-Orbit worked together to coordinate plans for the close flyby. <\/p>\n
The ION executed prescribed manuevers and ION passed by Otter Pup at increasingly close orbits, down to within approximately 1 kilometer. On April 19, Otter Pup pointed its cameras and captured images of ION, marking the successful rendezvous.<\/p>\n
Other companies contributed to the mission including Redwire Space, which provided the camera system utilized for image capture. LeoLab offered on-orbit state data, and Astro Digital, delivering continuous operational support throughout the duration of Otter Pup\u2019s mission lifecycle.<\/p>\n
Dr. Trevor Bennett, Co-founder of Starfish Space, said this mission maximized the value of the Otter Pup spacecraft despite its numerous challenges. <\/p>\n
\u201cSpace domain awareness, capturing images of other objects in space, is often a mission in and of itself. We were able to execute this task as a backup after multiple challenges and failures,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cThis was a rewarding way to conclude our first demonstration mission, and we look forward to returning to orbit with our next mission to push our capabilities forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Starfish Space executed a successful in-space rendezvous between its Otter Pup satellite and D-Orbit\u2019s ION SCV006 satellite. The companies announced the milestone on May 7. This was a backup mission for the Otter Pup, which faced a number of challenges on orbit. After launch deployment last year, the spacecraft fell into an uncontrollable rotation and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}