Orbital Robotics
"Built to catch spacecraft"
Seattle-area startup (2024) building ORA-series AI-controlled space robotic arms plus NavIQ/ASTRA-P autonomy for capturing and servicing spacecraft.
Orbital Robotics is a US space robotics startup founded in late 2024 by former Blue Origin engineers Aaron Borger (co-founder and CEO), Riley Mark (co-founder and lead hardware engineer) and Sohil Pokharna (co-founder and lead software engineer). The company's website places its lab in Seattle, Washington, while GeekWire has reported its base as Puyallup, Washington. Orbital Robotics develops autonomous robotic arms and AI flight software intended to rendezvous with, capture, manipulate and service spacecraft and debris in orbit, with target markets in on-orbit servicing, in-space assembly and national security.
The hardware is the ORA series. All ORA arms share the same control software, perception stack and joint architecture, sized for different missions. ORA-Astrosfera is the flagship seven-degree-of-freedom flight arm, described as radiation-tolerant and mission-customizable. ORA-Mini is sized for CubeSat-class missions, with a dual-arm configuration designed to fit a 12U CubeSat and a single-arm configuration for a 6U CubeSat. ORA-Giga is a heavy-lift variant intended for large-structure assembly, station servicing and high-mass capture, inheriting the ORA-Astrosfera architecture. Press coverage in 2026 referred to the company's arm as the ORA-A and to an earlier seven-degree-of-freedom lab prototype as the ORA-T1.
The software side is the Flight Software Suite, intended to let a spacecraft bus run the company's autonomy stack with minimal integration. NavIQ is the perception layer: it estimates the position, orientation and velocity of unprepared, non-cooperative satellites or debris from stereo vision alone, without CAD models, fiducial markers or prior imagery. ASTRA-P is the guidance and control layer, which takes NavIQ's state estimate and plans and executes approach and capture maneuvers; the company says its stability is verified with Lyapunov analysis and validated across thousands of randomized Monte Carlo runs. Black Flag, which named Orbital Robotics to its 2026 Black Flag 100 list, describes the system as using deep reinforcement learning to handle the dynamic coupling between an arm and a free-floating spacecraft.
The company's first in-space demonstration is planned aboard the International Space Station. GeekWire reported that, working with Arkisys (NASA's sustaining and maintenance partner for the Astrobee program) under a NASA Space Act Agreement, Orbital Robotics will launch a pair of scaled-down ORA arms that astronauts will install on a free-flying NASA Astrobee robot; the equipped Astrobee will then capture a second Astrobee and swap its compute module. Three demonstrations about a month apart are targeted for the third quarter of 2027, funded internally by the company.
Orbital Robotics has signed letters of intent with Starcloud, to provide AI-controlled arms for assembling, docking, maintaining and upgrading orbital datacenter modules, and with Space Ocean, to explore integration of arms and autonomous docking systems. It has announced an exploratory collaboration with Sophia Space on on-orbit AI compute and robotic manufacturing, is organizing a Save Hubble coalition around a robotic reboost and servicing concept for the Hubble Space Telescope, and, according to GeekWire, is working with an unnamed partner on an orbital rendezvous project for the U.S. Space Force. Advisors include Inspiration4 astronaut Christopher Sembroski, former AFRL director Eric Felt and former DARPA RSGS program manager Gordon Roesler. GeekWire reported in January 2026 that the company had raised about $310,000, including a friends-and-family round.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
ORA-Astrosfera
Flagship 7-DOF radiation-tolerant, mission-customizable flight arm for autonomous capture and servicing; scaled versions to fly on an ISS Astrobee capture demo targeted Q3 2027.
ORA-Mini
CubeSat-class arm: dual-arm configuration designed to fit a 12U CubeSat, single-arm configuration to fit a 6U CubeSat; shares ORA control and perception stack.
ORA-Giga
Heavy-lift ORA arm for large-structure assembly, station servicing and high-mass capture, inheriting the ORA-Astrosfera architecture and control software.
NavIQ
Stereo-vision perception software estimating position, orientation and velocity of non-cooperative satellites or debris without CAD models, fiducials or prior imagery.
ASTRA-P
Autonomous guidance and control software that plans and executes approach and capture maneuvers from NavIQ state estimates; Lyapunov-verified, Monte Carlo-validated.
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Contact Orbital Robotics
WEBSITE
https://www.orbital-robots.comHEADQUARTERS
United States
Company Facts
Founded
2024
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
-
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- Orbital Robotics
- ORA-Astrosfera
- ORA-Mini
- ORA-Giga
- NavIQ
- ASTRA-P
- autonomous capture
- non-cooperative target pose estimation
- Astrobee
- deep reinforcement learning
- space robotic arm
- Manufacturer
- Software/Algorithm
- Motion & Actuation
- Perception & Vision
- Control & Software
- Aerospace & Space
- Defense & Security
- On Orbit Servicing
