WASHINGTON — A French startup founded by former missile engineers is developing an air-launched spacecraft designed to intercept, capture and dispose of objects in orbit, whether they’re derelict satellites or potential threats.
Dark, established in 2022 by veterans of European defense contractors MBDA and Thales, aims to demonstrate a space weapon that would launch from a modified commercial aircraft, navigate to a target in orbit, grab it and safely deposit it in the South Pacific Ocean.
The Paris-based company has attracted about $11 million in venture funding and expanded to 40 employees, focusing on propulsion technologies, radar and other sensors needed to detect and inspect space objects.
“We believe the world needs counterspace systems that are adapted to the increasing hostility of orbital environments,” Clyde Laheyne, Dark’s co-founder, told SpaceNews in an interview.
The company has drawn investment from Eurazeo and Long Journey Ventures, a firm founded by Arielle Zuckerberg, sister of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Long Journey has previously backed SpaceX and defense tech company Anduril, among others.
Dark’s flagship product, called Interceptor, represents a new approach to space defense — one that mimics how military aircraft respond to aerial threats, said Laheyne. Government satellite operators today have limited options when their assets face potential dangers such as counterspace weapons designed to interfere with satellite operations.
“We currently lack both the means to deter these actions and the capability to act in orbit when they occur,” Laheyne said.
Interceptor would be dropped from a modified commercial aircraft, and would use a robotic module with multiple arms to grab and decelerate space objects. The first test flight planned for 2027 will aim only to rendezvous and shadow a target to prove navigation capabilities, Laheyne said, with later missions demonstrating actual capture and de-orbit. It would capture a targeted object before initiating a controlled descent into a designated “satellite graveyard” in the South Pacific, where Russia’s Mir space station was disposed of in 2001.
Dark has secured contracts with French government agencies, including the French Space Agency and the Defence Innovation Agency, to demonstrate its technology.
Laheyne defended the air-launch approach despite the commercial failure of Virgin Orbit. The lesson from that venture was that the air-launch model may not be suited for commercial operation but it can be a real asset for defense operations, he said. Using an airplane sidesteps common delays linked to weather at ground launch sites and allows the craft to align quickly with its target.
This concept would allow countries that don’t have spaceports to be able to launch rockets from a military air base, he said, and enables more precise delivery, reducing the need for complex orbital maneuvers.
“Instead of waiting for the optimal launch window as with ground-based launch, we use the plane to go directly under the orbit,” Laheyne said.
Tech still in development
Dark’s development milestones include tests of its methalox (liquid oxygen and liquid methane) cryogenic engine last year, with work ongoing to validate its orbital propulsion system and radar.
A selling point for potential customers is responsiveness, said Laheyne. He claims the Interceptor could respond to a threat within 24 hours of detection. “You give us a position of the object at the moment, and we can basically engage this object on orbit in less than 24 hours,” he said.
Dark’s emergence reflects growing European interest in space defense.
Laetitia Cesari, a Paris-based space policy expert, noted that France and other European nations are increasing investments in satellites “for very strategic purposes,” creating a need to protect these assets.
France has been particularly proactive, with defense budget provisions for “active defense systems” including “patrollers to defend strategic assets” in both low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit, Cesari said last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Franco-American cooperation in the space domain is also advancing. U.S. Space Command chief Gen. Stephen Whiting recently highlighted a milestone during a speech at the Space Symposium, noting that the U.S. and France recently conducted “our first ever bilateral rendezvous and proximity operation to demonstrate combined capabilities in space, in the vicinity of a strategic competitor spacecraft.”
