Posted May 20, 2023 at 8:56 p.m.
Will there soon be a new market for room cleaning? This is the goal of the European Space Agency (ESA) and ClearSpace, a Swiss company specializing in the destruction of space debris.
A first test mission in 2026
Scheduled for the second half of 2026, the launch will be on the small European launch vehicle VEGA C. On board it will have an articulated robot responsible for capturing identified debris weighing 112 kg. The latter was kept in a decommissioned orbit by ESA and is expected to fall back into the atmosphere within a maximum of 25 years, according to space debris containment regulations.
The maneuver to de-orbit it already looks complicated. In fact, the space debris has no attachment points and rotates on itself. Numerous tests and simulations are carried out before the official launch of the mission.
If the robot’s arms manage to catch the debris, it propels it out of orbit into Earth’s atmosphere, where it spontaneously burns up.
Photo: ClearSpace
The room gets very crowded
To ensure the proper functioning of satellites around the world, cleaning of certain orbits is inevitable.
There are currently more than 34,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 cm orbiting the Earth. 6,500 satellites are operational and their number is expected to exceed 27,000 by 2030.