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Astroscale on course for first UK national mission to remove space debris
Harwell, Oxford, UK, Tuesday 7 th March 2023 – Astroscale Ltd. (“Astroscale UK”), the UK & Europe subsidiary of Astroscale Holdings Inc. (“Astroscale”), the market leader in satellite servicing and long-term orbital sustainability across all orbits, reveals how its Active Debris Removal (ADR) servicer can help secure the economic and environmental future of space, through the UK’s first national mission to remove space debris.
The UK Government has a strategic priority (captured in the National Space Strategy , Sept 2021) to lead the global effort to clean up space. Astroscale has an innovative solution based on in-orbit heritage that will capitalise on world-leading technology from an industrial partnership across the breadth of the UK. The COSMIC mission – Cleaning Outer Space Mission through Innovative Capture – will harness Astroscale’s Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) and robotic debris capture capabilities to remove two defunct British satellites currently orbiting Earth by 2026.
“As our reliance on satellites for everyday activity grows, the UK is leading efforts to make space more sustainable,” said Ray Fielding, Head of Sustainability and ADR Mission at the UK Space Agency. “We’re backing companies, such as Astroscale, to design innovative new missions to clear hazardous space junk. We’re also developing new capabilities to improve how we track objects in orbit, while setting new standards and working closely with international partners to ensure a safe and secure space environment for future generations.”
This animation video highlights how Astroscale’s COSMIC servicer will get the job done. Astroscale is currently working with selected industrial partners on the design of a spacecraft that will incorporate an innovative robotic arm to safely and securely capture a defunct satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO). Following capture, COSMIC will maneuver the defunct satellite out of the LEO environment and release it into a lower disposal orbit where it will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. The COSMIC servicer will then go on to rendezvous with, capture and remove a second debris object.
“Active Debris Removal means we’re trying to grab hold of an object in space that was not designed with capture in mind,” said Sarah Cawley, Senior Project Manager for COSMIC at Astroscale. “In LEO, objects are hurtling through space at 17,000 miles [27,360 km] per hour. Our job is to design a spacecraft that can approach the unprepared satellite, analyse its behaviour and trajectory, and then maneuver to capture it safely. Our in-house engineering expertise and in-orbit heritage puts us in a leading position to turn this innovative solution into a reality and help the UK Government realise the ambition to launch a national mission to remove space debris, through national capability and partnerships.”
“Astroscale was founded in 2013 with the goal of enabling a sustainable space environment for future generations,” said Nick Shave, Managing Director of Astroscale UK. “We now offer a variety of in-orbit services across the company, providing satellite operators with robust and responsible solutions. ADR is focused on the removal of defunct satellites or unprepared debris. We are excited to draw on our mission heritage and to partner with the UK Space Agency on this mission-first for the nation. Through COSMIC, Astroscale is pushing the commercial in-orbit servicing economy forward, developing national capability, world-leading facilities and strong partnerships across the whole of the UK.”
Astroscale’s ADR programme is strengthening the UK supply and value chain. The COSMIC mission is being developed in collaboration with 10 UK-based partner companies in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland including: MDA UK, Thales Alenia Space UK, Nammo, GMV-NSL, Raytheon NORSS, Goonhilly Earth Station, Satellite Applications Catapult, Willis Towers Watson, and other advisory and industrial partners. The team combines extensive systems engineering, Guidance, Navigation and Control, mission operations and ground segment expertise.
Astroscale most recently proved its magnetic capture and RPO capability in-orbit during the ground-breaking End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission in 2021-2022. ELSA-d was licensed in the UK and operated from the National In-orbit Servicing Centre at Harwell – a new centre developed in partnership between Astroscale and the Satellite Applications Catapult and supported by UKRI. During the ELSA-d mission, the Astroscale operations team performed a series of complex maneuvers to align, release and capture a demonstration satellite with a servicer spacecraft using relative navigation and autonomous on-board systems.
Later this year the company’s Japanese subsidiary, Astroscale Japan Inc., will launch its ADRAS-J satellite in a step towards completing the world’s first large object debris-removal mission – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration (CRD2) Project. Astroscale Japan was previously contracted as a partner for Phase I of this project, and in this mission ADRAS-J will rendezvous with and inspect a 3-tonne upper stage H-IIA rocket body. The satellite will demonstrate rendezvous, fly-around, and proximity operations, and obtain images to deliver observational data essential to a Phase II of the project, which aims to capture and deorbit a large debris object in or after Japanese fiscal year 2025.
The COSMIC debris removal servicer will be a technological evolution of Astroscale’s End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-Multi-client (ELSA-M) servicer – a commercial partnership together with the European and UK Space Agencies and OneWeb, the global satellite operator, under the Sunrise programme. The first ELSA-M servicer will be launched ahead of the UK’s Active Debris Removal mission in 2025.
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Sweeping Up Space: The End-of-Life Solution
Space sustainability has become a hot topic across the international space industry, and for good reason.
To date, governments and satellite operators have launched an estimated 11,670 satellites into space, many of which have been positioned in low-Earth orbit (LEO). According to the European Space Agency, only 4,300 of the remaining 7,200 orbiting satellites are still active, leaving nearly 3,000 non-maneuverable vehicles racing through space. Active space vehicles frequently perform “Collision Avoidance Maneuvers” (CAMs) to evade impact with other active objects and defunct space debris. Even the International Space Station (ISS) is not safe. Orbital debris presents one of the highest risks to the station, forcing up to 4+ Collision Avoidance Maneuvers a year. The paths of decaying objects frequently intersect that of the ISS, as they spiral towards the Earth’s impassable atmosphere and their fiery grave. And just recently in May, a piece of debris was found to have struck the station’s Canadarm2, leaving a sizeable hole.
The orbital environment is set to change further with the emergence of large satellite constellations. These large networks will grow the number of satellites in orbit, with tens of thousands of new satellites predicted to be launched by 2030, leading to an increasingly congested orbital environment. The sheer quantity alone should be enough to raise alarm bells for satellite operators, as well as any users of space-based infrastructure, the latter of which more or less covers every living person in the developed world.
Space is a notoriously harsh environment and satellite failures happen. The numbers involved in large constellations make in-orbit failures a significant issue for space sustainability. Take, for example, a hypothetical constellation of 1,000 satellites operating at a high-LEO altitude. A failure rate of 5% would result in around 50 dead spacecraft hurtling through the same orbital environment as the remaining live craft. As more satellites are launched to replenish the constellation, the number of failed satellites in orbit would only increase. This clearly poses a significant threat to any objects in the same or similar orbits, including the operator’s own constellation. It is one thing to pilot hundreds of controlled vehicles through their planned orbits in coordinated unison, but another thing entirely to add 50 malfunctioning rogues, each travelling at orbital speeds of over 17,000mph.
Not only does this risk the operator’s own constellation and other objects in the same orbital vicinity… it threatens the entire LEO environment, as each collision can potentially create tens of thousands of new pieces of debris. Over time, this could lead to a “Kessler Syndrome” runaway effect, where an increasing number of orbital objects leads to a growing number of collisions, and thus an ever-increasing volume of orbital debris.
So, with the exponential rise of constellations already underway and set to continue, what can we do to simultaneously benefit from revolutionary LEO-broadband networks whilst guaranteeing a sustainable space environment for future generations?
This is where End-of-Life (EOL) Servicing comes in. With a small amount of forethought and pre-emptive action, constellation operators can prepare their satellites with docking plates before launch, allowing compatible servicer satellites to rendezvous, dock with, and dispose of these clients at the end of their lives.
Imagine an entire fleet of highly advanced robotic servicers, ready and waiting to rendezvous with nearby satellites to actively de-orbit them at the end of their lives. Once complete, these robotic space sweepers could return to their parking orbits and lie patiently in wait for another call from their next satellite-in-need. This might sound like science fiction, but this is one of several visions that Astroscale are already well on their way to achieving. The recent launch of the ELSA-d (End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration) and the revolutionary multi-client servicer program, ELSA-M, are milestones on the path to bringing this vision into reality.
This ELSA-M program represents the global space industry’s next big step towards offering a commercial servicer capable of removing multiple pieces of debris in a single mission. Current activities include the development of key EOL technologies with our partners at the UK Space Agency, European Space Agency and OneWeb, under the recently signed Sunrise program. These technology developments will enable the first ever rendezvous and docking between an EOL servicer and a commercial client spacecraft, paving the way for the start of our commercial EOL service.
And this is just the beginning. By mastering the technologies required for on-orbit rendezvous and close proximity operations, along with robotic capture of uncontrolled space objects, this EOL technology will support the development of even more advanced forms of on-orbit servicing, including on-orbit refueling, on-orbit upgrades, and even on-orbit manufacturing and / or assembly.
But for now, the main objective remains simple, though far from easy… as Astroscale develops revolutionary EOL technology, we work in partnership towards preserving a clean, safe and sustainable orbital environment for humanity’s continued exploration and utilization of the cosmos.
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