Dark, based in Paris, is working on a mobile platform that can launch, connect to, and eventually de-orbit objects in space that won’t cooperate. This platform is meant to solve both the problem of space junk and the problem of conflict in orbit.
Clyde Laheyne, CEO of Dark, said that the company wants to be the “S.W.A.T. team of space.”
The three-year-old company is making Interceptor, a spaceship that looks like a rocket-powered boxing glove and can be sent into orbit quickly to gently knock an object out of its path.
Interceptor is fired from an airplane that has been specially modified. Like a Virgin Galactic launch, the plane will carry the rocket above the rough lower atmosphere, where it can be set on fire and launched. As soon as the rocket gets close to the target object, the spacecraft separates from it and uses its own sensors and power to find and get closer to it. When it is lined up right, Interceptor’s padded “effector” pushes against the object, de-orbiting it in the process.
Laheyne said, “The space sector is set up to do planned, long missions. But orbital defense is more about unplanned, short missions.” This is how Interceptor “is more like an air defense missile,” he said. “It must always be ready. You have no reason not to use it.
But the Interceptor’s soft hit doesn’t make a debris field or any other dangerous, unpredictable effects like a real missile or anti-satellite weapon would.
Laheyne and CTO Guillaume Orvain started Dark. They are both engineers who got their start at MBDA, a multinational company that makes missiles. Because of this job experience, the Interceptor idea, which is meant to work on call like missile systems, really comes through. Laheyne said that’s also why Dark is building its own launch platform: to make sure that defense, civilian, and business companies can use it at any time.
In 2021, Dark raised $5 million in funding. The overall table was made up of European investors, with Eurazeo as the lead investor. Yesterday, the team secured an extra $6 million, with Long Journey Ventures, its first investor in the United States, joining. (That fund is run by Arielle Zuckerberg, who is Mark Zuckerberg’s younger sister.)
Before the company can even come close to taking something like a broken-down rocket second stage out of space, it has a lot of work to do. Dark has been working on important systems like the software and cold engine. Now, the team is focusing on making the technologies Interceptor will need for quick, unplanned missions. These technologies include long-range tracking and detection, independent flight algorithms, and a system for safe controlled reentry.
Laheyne said that fixing up an airplane could cost $50 million, which is about the same as building a new launch pad. The team also needs to get the whole platform ready for a demonstration trip in 2026.
Many of the core technologies of the full-scale platform would be tested on that mission. The goal of the mission will not be to de-orbit an object, but to touch one. Even this is way too ambitious: Moving close to another object in space and communicating with it is called rendezvous and proximity operations. So far, no company has figured out how to do these.
A de-orbit attempt will be part of the second demonstration trip, which is set to happen in 2027. The company would begin de-orbiting objects for government agencies that work with them if everything goes as planned. “Hopefully we don’t have to use it,” Laheyne said about defense buyers.
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It’s always the same thing when I talk about missiles: if you use it first, it’s an act of war. It’s a safety move to be second. “If you know you can do it and you can do it, that’s enough to stop you,” he said. “The ideal is to avoid conflict; the system should make it impossible to think about fighting.”
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