Technology
Making tumbling objects catchable.
Delta Infinite is developing a two-part reactive foam designed to be applied to a tumbling object in orbit, expand and cure in vacuum, and slow the object’s tumble. Where it covers, the cured foam is designed to leave a surface an existing capture system can grip.
The problem
Capture comes first, and it’s the hardest step.
Most objects in orbit were never designed to be caught. They carry no grapple fixture and no docking interface, and a non-cooperative object gives a servicer no help: no position or attitude data, no docking aid, and often a tumble. Yet capture is the first step of every servicing, removal, salvage or relocation mission.
Rigid capture systems such as robotic arms and docking mechanisms are designed for targets that are nearly still, around three to five degrees per second or less. A derelict’s tumble is neither knowable in advance nor stable: ESA’s Envisat spun up after it failed in 2012 and slowed over the following years.1
It tumbles.
Tumbling objects can wobble about more than one axis, which complicates tracking, grasp planning and contact. And the grip point moves faster the farther it is from the spin axis, so the same tumble rate is harder to match on a larger object.
It has no handle.
There’s nothing on it designed to be gripped.
Its skin is fragile.
Insulation blankets, solar arrays and antennas are fragile and hard to sense, which makes rigid contact riskier.
Its momentum becomes yours.
Rigid first contact is brief and stiff, so forces spike and a target can bounce away before a mechanism closes. Once a servicer takes hold, the object’s angular momentum is the servicer’s to absorb or dump.
Where it fits
Between rendezvous and capture.
We don’t replace capture systems. We act before them. In our operational concept, the foam module rides on a partner’s servicing or debris-removal spacecraft, and the partner’s own mechanism completes the capture. The host spacecraft still handles rendezvous, navigation and momentum management.
- Find and trackCatalog tracking and target selection
- RendezvousThe host spacecraft approaches
- Pre-stabilizeDelta Infinite’s foam, designed to slow the tumble
- CaptureThe partner’s mechanism takes hold
- Service, relocate or removeThe mission the capture enables
Operationally, Delta Infinite supplies the foam interface, and the sequence that deploys it, for partners’ spacecraft. Its only spacecraft design is a small demonstration-mission concept.
How it’s designed to work
Deploy. Expand and cure. Grip.
01 · DEPLOY
Foam from a distance
A module on the host spacecraft applies the foam from a standoff distance. It is designed to fire only on an explicit command from its host, behind hardware interlocks.
02 · EXPAND & CURE
The vacuum problem
In vacuum, a foam expands because the gas inside it has nothing pushing back, and it must thicken fast enough to trap that gas or its cells collapse. With no air, it sheds its reaction heat only into the object and out as radiation.
03 · SLOW & GRIP
A surface to grip
As it bonds and cures, the foam is designed to slow the tumble. Where it covers, the cured foam itself is the grip surface. Nothing separate is attached to it.
Two effects are designed to slow the tumble.
Added mass, far from the axis.
Adding mass far from a spinning object’s axis raises its moment of inertia; with no outside torque, its spin rate must fall, the way a figure skater slows by extending their arms. Where the foam lands matters as much as how much lands, because the effect grows with the square of the distance from the spin axis.
Energy lost inside the foam.
As bonded foam flexes, it is designed to turn rotational energy into heat, settling a multi-axis tumble into a steady spin about the object’s major axis: the settling a derelict does on its own over time, designed to happen far sooner. For objects already in a steady spin, the added-mass effect does the work. How fast the foam dissipates energy is one of the properties our test program will measure.
Built to work with capture systems
We make the handoff easier.
Every capture ends with the capturing spacecraft taking on the object’s momentum; that’s physics, whatever the capture method. The foam is designed to change what arrives at that moment: a slower rate to match, less wobble, and a surface to grip where there was none.
The host spacecraft keeps doing what it does best: rendezvous, inspection, momentum management and disposal. Because the bond is designed to be permanent, full coverage is built for objects being removed or relocated.
What our models show
Modeled.
In our idealized capture-dynamics simulation, a 260 kg flat-panel satellite chassis in a multi-axis tumble settles into a steady spin as foam accumulates.
Idealized simulation. Foam placement is idealized and material properties are placeholders until thermal-vacuum testing.
The final rate is set by conservation of angular momentum, how much foam lands, and where it lands. In our models, a meaningful reduction on satellite-class targets takes tens of kilograms of foam; large, fast, flat objects may take repeated applications.
The simulation is verified internally: angular momentum is conserved to machine precision, and its end states match the theoretical minimum-energy spin.
Next: measurement. Thermal-vacuum testing replaces the model’s placeholder material properties with measured ones, and a dynamic test follows to measure tumble reduction directly. External validation of the model comes from that data.
Where it stands
TRL 3, working toward TRL 4.
Delta Infinite assesses its technology at TRL 3. Here’s what that rests on, and what comes next.
- Bench demonstrations using commercial two-part analog foam systems have established feasibility of controlled dispense, expansion, cure, and adhesion to representative substrates.
- The first successful vacuum foam-deployment test, completed in 2024 with a commercial two-part analog foam.
- Stable vacuum held over 24 hours (2024).
- A foam dispensing module, assembled and mounted on the vacuum chamber.
- A formal thermal-vacuum test plan to move from TRL 3 to TRL 4.
- An analysis pipeline built before the first test, so every result is reduced the same way.
- The Delta Infinite formulation is designed; next is from-scratch batch validation.
- Thermal-vacuum characterization, replacing model placeholders with measured material properties.
- A dynamic test that measures tumble reduction directly.
- Sustained-microgravity testing, then flight.
The thermal-vacuum validation campaign is scoped, documented, and gated on funding. Help fund the next step →
The path to TRL 4
Built to find where it breaks.
Before the campaign, the formulation has to be made from raw ingredients and brought up to a repeatable batch. The campaign that follows is built to find where the foam’s behavior breaks, not only to confirm expected numbers. Where the foam stops working, we report that boundary as a result.
What the campaign characterizes
- Expansion in vacuum
- Cure
- Cure against cold surfaces
- Batch repeatability
- Adhesion and how each bond fails
- Cell structure
- Outgassing
- Durability through thermal cycling
Cold is the hardest case.
The plan cures foam against surfaces held from about +120 °C down to −150 °C, spanning the sun-synchronous-orbit range, and classifies whether each bond fails in the foam or at the interface. Adhesion is tested on the materials a derelict actually presents: bare and painted aluminum, insulation film, carbon composite, stainless steel and solar-cell cover glass. Outgassing is measured against standard spacecraft-materials screening criteria and as a time-resolved flux.
What we’ll find out next.
Each step up the TRL ladder answers more, and each is funded in turn. Thermal vacuum characterizes the material. A dynamic test then measures tumble reduction directly, since static samples can’t. Testing in sustained microgravity follows, because ground samples cure under gravity, along with durability against atomic oxygen and ultraviolet exposure, which a chamber doesn’t reproduce.
The engineering ahead
What the next phases are built to answer.
These are the questions any serious capture program has to answer, and our test program is designed around them.
All at once
Can one foam expand cleanly in vacuum, cure against a very cold surface, and survive thermal cycling while outgassing little enough to fly near sensitive optics?
Delivery
Delivering foam from a safe distance to a tumbling object, without creating new debris, is engineering still ahead of us.
Timing
On a fast-tumbling object, the surface rotates away as the foam sets.
Microgravity
Ground tests can’t reproduce microgravity during cure, so the foam’s structure in orbit may differ from a chamber’s.
Scale
Results from small samples may not scale directly to the tens of kilograms a real application would deposit.
After cure
The object’s new shape and mass properties have to be measured before a capture system engages.
Gripping foam
Whether a crushable foam surface lets existing grippers tolerate higher relative rates is an open question we’re working on.
Durability & flight
Unprotected polymers erode under atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit, and the path to flight hardware is still ahead.
Beyond Earth orbit
The same problem, further out.
A spinning, uncooperative object with no grapple point is the same kind of problem whether it’s a dead satellite or a near-Earth asteroid. A 2012 Keck Institute study estimated that returning a small near-Earth asteroid could deliver mass to high lunar orbit at roughly one-eighth the per-kilogram cost of launching it from Earth, and named capturing and de-spinning the asteroid as one of its three key feasibility questions.4 NASA carried the concept forward as the Asteroid Redirect Mission and cancelled it in 2017.
The physics of capture carries over. The foam chemistry, adhesion to asteroid surfaces, and cure in deep space would all need to be validated separately. Asteroid resources are the long-horizon destination; near-term work is entirely in Earth orbit.
FAQ
Questions we get.
What does Delta Infinite do?
Delta Infinite is developing a two-part reactive foam designed to slow tumbling objects in orbit and leave a surface that existing capture systems can grip. It’s a preparation layer that acts before capture, for debris removal, satellite servicing and relocation. The company is based in Denver, Colorado.
Why can’t existing systems capture tumbling objects?
Robotic arms and docking mechanisms are designed for targets that are nearly still, around three to five degrees per second or less. Some derelicts tumble much faster, can wobble about more than one axis, and have no grapple fixture. That gap is what our foam is designed to close. If you run a capture program facing it, we’d like to talk.
How does foam slow a tumbling object?
It’s designed to work two ways. Added mass far from the spin axis raises the object’s moment of inertia, so its spin rate falls. And as the bonded foam flexes, it turns rotational energy into heat, settling a multi-axis tumble into a steady spin. Both effects are modeled in-house, and our test program is built to measure them.
Does the foam stop the object spinning?
It slows and steadies it. As with any capture method, the capturing spacecraft takes on the remaining momentum; the foam is designed to make that job easier, with a slower rate to match, less wobble, and a surface to grip.
Does the foam work in a vacuum?
It’s designed to expand and cure in vacuum, and bench demonstrations using commercial analog foams have shown controlled dispense, expansion, cure and adhesion. Our own formulation is next, in a thermal-vacuum campaign that is scoped and documented. Investors interested in funding that step can reach Kai directly.
Is Delta Infinite building a spacecraft?
Not as a product. We supply the foam interface, and the sequence that deploys it, for partners’ spacecraft; our only spacecraft design is a small demonstration-mission concept. If you build or operate servicing or debris-removal spacecraft and want to explore integrating it, reach out.
How is this different from nets, harpoons or robotic arms?
Those are capture mechanisms. The foam is a preparation layer that acts before a mechanism engages, so the two are complementary: we’re designed to make existing capture systems work on targets they can’t take today. Foam has been proposed for debris before, including to make tumbling objects easier to capture; our focus is foam as a preparation layer for existing capture systems. Capture-system developers: let’s talk.
What TRL is the technology at?
TRL 3, working toward TRL 4. The next step is to batch our formulation from raw ingredients and characterize it in thermal vacuum; the campaign is scoped, documented and gated on funding. Program offices and investors can contact us for the test plan overview.
Can it be used on working satellites?
Full coverage is designed for objects being removed or relocated, since the bond is designed to be permanent. Smaller applications could serve life-extension missions, which is a pathway we are exploring. Contact us to explore further.
What does this have to do with asteroids?
A tumbling asteroid with no grapple point is the same kind of capture problem as a dead satellite. The physics carries over, and the chemistry and adhesion would be validated separately for that environment. Asteroid resources are our long-horizon destination; near-term work is entirely in Earth orbit. Researchers working on small-body capture: we’d like to hear from you.
How do I work with Delta Infinite?
Investors, capture and servicing operators, program offices and researchers can reach Kai directly at kai@delta-infinite.com or through the contact page.
Get in touch
Start a conversation.
Investors, capture and servicing operators, program offices, and researchers working on non-cooperative capture: we’d like to hear from you.
Sources
- Envisat rotation: Sommer et al., 7th European Conference on Space Debris, 2017 (paper 437).
- Woicke, Jipp, Winkler and Steimle, ClearSpace-1 GNC paper, 9th European Conference on Space Debris, 2025 (paper 317).
- Kucharski et al., “High-definition photometry: a new tool for space debris characterization,” ILRS Workshop, 2018. Paper.
- Brophy et al., Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, Keck Institute for Space Studies, 2012.