What happened
Starfish launched Otter on October 1 for NASA’s SSPICY mission. The spacecraft was meant to approach inactive US objects in low Earth orbit and test navigation, propulsion and an articulated robotic boom. NASA announced the recovery assessment on November 3.
Why it matters
The failure came before inspections began. It tells engineers something specific about recovery design: a radio that ground controllers cannot reach removes their normal route for correcting an onboard fault. It does not establish that the spacecraft’s navigation or inspection hardware failed.
What to watch
A useful follow-up would be a documented test of how a future vehicle restores communications when its protection software disables the radio.
Sources & verification
Source links are not a count of independent confirmations.
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