Based in Paris Dark is taking on the dual problem of debris and conflict in orbit with its mobile platform designed to launch, dock and ultimately deorbit uncooperative objects in space.
Dark CEO Clyde Laheyne said the company aims to become the “SWAT team of space.”
The three-year-old startup is developing Interceptor, a spacecraft that is essentially a rocket-powered boxing glove that can be launched on short notice to gently knock a wayward object out of orbit.
The Interceptor is launched from a specially equipped aircraft. Like a Virgin Galactic launch, the plane will carry the rocket above the tumultuous lower atmosphere, where it can be released and ignited. Once the rocket reaches the vicinity of the target object, the spacecraft separates and uses onboard sensors and propulsion to find and approach it. When properly aligned, Interceptor pushes against the object with its padded “effector” and eventually deorbits it.
“The entire space sector is organized to do long, planned missions… but orbital defense is more about short, unplanned missions,” Laheyne said. In that sense, the Interceptor “is more like an air defense missile,” he explained. “You have to be ready all the time. There is no viable excuse not to use it.”
However, unlike a real missile or anti-satellite weapon, the Interceptor’s gentle strike does not produce a debris field or any other dangerous and unpredictable effects.
Dark was founded by Laheyne and CTO Guillaume Orvain, engineers who trained at multinational missile developer MBDA. This work experience is reflected in the Interceptor concept, which is being designed to operate on guard, similar to missile systems. That’s also why Dark is developing its own launch platform: to ensure defense, civilian and commercial companies are ready at a moment’s notice, Laheyne said.
Dark co-founders Clyde Laheyne and Guillaume Orvain. Image credit: Dark
Dark closed a $5 million funding round in 2021, with the funding desk comprised of European investors, including lead investor Eurazeo. The team closed a $6 million extension yesterday, including participation from its first US-based investor, Long Journey Ventures. (That fund is run by Arielle Zuckerberg, the younger sister of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg.)
The company has a lot of work ahead of it before it gets close to deorbiting something like the second stage of a defunct rocket. Dark has focused on developing critical systems, such as the cryogenic engine and software. Now the team is shifting its focus toward developing the technologies needed for the type of rapid, unplanned missions that Interceptor will execute, such as long-range detection and tracking, autonomous flight algorithms, and a system for reliable controlled reentry.
The team must also modernize an aircraft, which Laheyne estimated could cost $50 million, or about the price of building a new launch pad, and have the entire pad ready for a demonstration mission in 2026.
That mission would validate many of the large-scale platform’s core technologies, although it won’t actually aim to deorbit an object, just touch one. Even this is incredibly ambitious: no company has yet figured out so-called rendezvous and proximity operations, that is, approaching another object in space and interacting with it.
The second demonstration mission, currently planned for 2027, willpower include a deorbitation attempt. If all goes as planned, the company would begin deorbiting objects for allied civilian agencies. As far as defense customers are concerned, “hopefully we don’t have to use it,” Laheyne said.
“I’ve been making missiles for years and it’s always the same theme: If you use it first, it’s an act of war. If you are second, it is an act of defense. “If you can do it and people know you can do it, that’s deterrence,” he said. “The ideal is deterrence, the system that makes conflict unthinkable.”
