The U.S. military has quietly taken a historic step in how it treats its hardware in orbit, signing a first-of-its-kind contract to actively pull dead satellites out of low Earth orbit instead of leaving them to drift. The U.S. Space Force has agreed to pay a startup, Starfish Space, tens of millions of dollars to send up a robotic “space tug” that will rendezvous with aging spacecraft and drag them down into the atmosphere to burn up. It is a practical response to the growing problem of orbital debris and a signal that end-of-life disposal is becoming a core requirement of national security space architecture.
At its heart, the deal is about turning what used to be an afterthought, the final years of a satellite’s life, into a managed service with clear performance targets and a price tag. Instead of designing every spacecraft to deorbit itself, the Pentagon is testing whether it can buy disposal as a service, much as it already buys launch and communications capacity from commercial providers.
The $52.5 Million bet on deorbit-as-a-service
The centerpiece of the move is a contract in which the Space Force Awards Starfish Space $52.5 Million for what officials describe as Proliferated LEO Deorbit Services. In plain terms, the U.S. government is paying a private company to take responsibility for removing multiple satellites from low Earth orbit at the end of their missions. The award is framed as a way to support the Space Development Agency’s growing constellation, which is designed to be large, resilient and distributed rather than relying on a handful of exquisite spacecraft.
Other reporting describes the same move as the Space Force Secures a $52 Deal to Deorbit Satellites, with Starfish Space identified as the company that has locked in the contract with the U.S. Space For to provide this capability within military operations. That framing underscores that the $52 figure is not just a technology grant but a service buy, meant to enhance resilience by ensuring that dead or dying spacecraft do not linger as hazards in the same orbital shells where new satellites are constantly being added. By treating disposal as an operational requirement, the Pentagon is effectively declaring that leaving its own junk in orbit is no longer acceptable.
How Starfish’s Otter plans to grab “dead or dying” satellites
Starfish Space is not being asked to invent its technology from scratch. The company has been developing a small servicing vehicle called Otter, and the new contract leans heavily on those Otter Vehicle Technical Capabilities that the Space Force has already been tracking. The Otter is designed to approach other spacecraft, match their orbit and rotation, and then dock or grapple so it can either reposition them or guide them into a controlled reentry. Earlier coverage notes that Starfish Space’s Otter is built to rendezvous with and safely deorbit satellites without prior modifications, meaning it can work with existing hardware that was never designed to be serviced in orbit, a crucial feature for legacy military constellations.
Technical details matter here because the job is inherently risky. Starfish has developed a computer vision based guidance system, described under the CETACEAN label, that allows Otter to recognize and track client satellites even if they are tumbling or uncooperative, which is a primary concern for mission resilience in crowded orbital regimes. The company’s own materials describe how Starfish Space Awarded First Ever End, Life Disposal Contract for a LEO Constellation from Seattle is targeting launch in 2027, indicating that the first operational Otter servicing mission for a low Earth orbit Constellation is already on the calendar. The same spacecraft design is expected to handle both servicing and disposal, which means the tug that tops off fuel or nudges a satellite into a new orbit could later be tasked with dragging another one down.
A contract built on earlier Space Force investments
This is not the first time the Pentagon has written a large check to this particular startup. In May of the previous year, Starfish Space lands $37.5 million Space Force contract for on-orbit servicing vehicle, a deal that was announced out of WASHINGTON and described how the startup Starfish Spac would build and operate an initial Otter for servicing missions. That earlier $37.5 m award, also reported as $37.5 million, was structured as a technology and demonstration effort, giving the company a chance to prove that its tug could operate safely around government satellites.
Officials now say that the new deorbit award builds on a history of collaboration between the Space Force and the Tukwila based startup. In June, Space Systems leaders backed Starfish as part of a broader push to maintain advantage in a contested environment, and the latest contract is framed as a logical extension of that strategy. By moving from a pure servicing vehicle to a Proliferated LEO Deorbit Services model, the Space Force is signaling that it sees on orbit logistics, including disposal, as a way to keep its proliferated constellations flexible and harder to disrupt.
Why the Space Development Agency wants dead satellites gone
The customer for much of this work is the Space Development Agency, or SDA, which is building the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, known as PWSA, as a mesh of hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit. SDA awards PWSA satellite end-of-life disposal contract to Starfish Space, describing how the agency wants a way to remove spacecraft that are dead or dying from its layers of tracking, communications and missile warning satellites. The logic is straightforward: if PWSA is meant to be resilient because it has many nodes, then each node that fails and stays in orbit becomes a potential source of debris that could threaten the rest of the network.
In that context, Starfish Wins SDA Deorbit-As-A-Service Contract is more than a catchy label. The More detailed description explains that Starfish will launch an Otter spacecraft that can deorbit multiple satellites in a single mission, turning disposal into a repeatable service rather than a one-off stunt. SDA leaders have also pointed back to an earlier Strategic Funding Increase, noting that In May the agency backed an Otter for a first of its kind, multi domain platform that could support both military and civil customers. By tying disposal to the PWSA architecture from the start, SDA is trying to avoid the trap of building a massive constellation first and worrying about its orbital footprint later.
From niche experiment to template for sustainable space
What makes this contract stand out is that it is explicitly framed as the first ever end-of-life disposal contract for a LEO constellation, not just a demonstration of cool robotics. The Starfish Space Awarded First Ever End, Life Disposal Contract for a LEO, Constellation announcement from Seattle makes clear that the company is being asked to take responsibility for the full end-of-life phase of specific satellites, with launch targeted in 2027 and follow on missions expected if the model works. That is a different posture from earlier servicing experiments, which focused on extending the life of high value satellites rather than guaranteeing their removal.
Experts in orbital sustainability have long argued that satellite and launch vehicle operators must remove their mission hardware as quickly as possible after the end of missions, either by deorbiting via onboard propulsion or other methods. A widely cited set of recommendations notes that Third, satellite and launch vehicle operators must remove their mission hardware as quickly as possible after the end of missions, orbiting via onboard propulsion or other methods, and the Starfish contract is one of the first times a major military customer has written that principle into a paid service. If the Otter missions succeed, they could become a template for how other large constellations, from broadband providers to Earth observation fleets, budget for and execute their own cleanup.
More from Morning Overview