{"id":17154,"date":"2019-12-09T16:55:08","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T16:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=17154"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:13:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:13:24","slug":"worlds-first-space-debris-removal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/worlds-first-space-debris-removal\/","title":{"rendered":"World\u2019s first space debris removal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"922\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-1024x922.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-17155\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-1024x922.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-300x270.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-768x691.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg 1200w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>ClearSpace-1 will be the first space mission to remove an item of debris from orbit, planned for launch in 2025. The mission is being procured as a service contract with a start-up-led commercial consortium, to help establish a new market for in-orbit servicing, as well as debris removal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following a competitive process, a consortium led by Swiss startup\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/clearspace.today\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ClearSpace<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a spin-off company established by an experienced team of space debris researchers based at Ecole Polytechnique F\u00e9d\u00e9rale de Lausanne (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.epfl.ch\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EPFL<\/a>) research institute \u2013 will be invited to submit their final proposal, before starting the project next March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis is the right time for such a mission,\u201d says Luc Piguet, founder and CEO of ClearSpace. \u201cThe space debris issue is more pressing than ever before. Today we have nearly 2000 live satellites in space and more than 3000 failed ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd in the coming years the number of satellites will increase by an order of magnitude, with multiple mega-constellations made up of hundreds or even thousands of satellites planned for low Earth orbit to deliver wide-coverage, low-latency telecommunications and monitoring services. The need is clear for a \u2018tow truck\u2019 to remove failed satellites from this highly trafficked region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/About_Us\/Corporate_news\/ESA_ministers_commit_to_biggest_ever_budget\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Space19+, ESA\u2019s Ministerial Council,<\/a>\u00a0which took place in Seville, Spain, at the end of November, ministers agreed to place a service contract with a commercial provider for the safe removal of an inactive ESA-owned object from low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Supported within ESA\u2019s new Space Safety programme, the aim is to contribute actively to cleaning up space, while also demonstrating the technologies needed for debris removal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cImagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water,\u201d says ESA Director General Jan W\u00f6rner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue. ESA\u2019s Member States have given their strong support to this new mission, which also points the way forward to essential new commercial services in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEven if all space launches were halted tomorrow, projections show that the overall orbital debris population will continue to grow, as collisions between items generate fresh debris in a cascade effect,\u201d says Luisa Innocenti, heading ESA\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esa.int\/cleanspace\/%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Clean Space<\/a>\u00a0initiative. \u201cWe need to develop technologies to avoid creating new debris and removing the debris already up there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNASA and ESA studies show that the only way to stabilise the orbital environment is to actively remove large debris items. Accordingly we will be continuing our development of essential guidance, navigation and control technologies and rendezvous and capture methods through a new project called Active Debris Removal\/ In-Orbit Servicing \u2013 ADRIOS. The results will be applied to ClearSpace-1. This new mission, implemented by an ESA project team, will allow us to demonstrate these technologies, achieving a world first in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ClearSpace-1 mission will target the Vespa (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter) upper stage left in an approximately 800 km by 660 km altitude orbit after the second flight of ESA\u2019s Vega launcher back in 2013. With a mass of 100 kg, the Vespa is close in size to a small satellite, while its relatively simple shape and sturdy construction make it a suitable first goal, before progressing to larger, more challenging captures by follow-up missions \u2013 eventually including multi-object capture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ClearSpace-1 \u2018chaser\u2019 will be launched into a lower 500-km orbit for commissioning and critical tests before being raised to the target orbit for rendezvous and capture using a quartet of robotic arms under ESA supervision. The combined chaser plus Vespa will then be deorbited to burn up in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n  <br \/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ClearSpace-1 will be the first space mission to remove an item of debris from orbit, planned for launch in 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",1200,1080,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-200x200.jpg",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-300x270.jpg",300,270,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-768x691.jpg",750,675,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-1024x922.jpg",750,675,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",1200,1080,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",1200,1080,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",889,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",633,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",600,540,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",600,540,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-760x490.jpg",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-550x360.jpg",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA-95x65.jpg",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",640,576,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",96,86,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/VESPA.jpg",150,135,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/news\/space-news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}