Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Space

The ESA Starts a New Commercial Sector in Space: Removing Space Debris (esa.int) 47

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike brings some big news from outer space. European Space Agency announced this week that they're signing "a €86 million ($102 million USD) contract with an industrial team led by the Swiss start-up ClearSpace SA to purchase a unique service: the first removal of an item of space debris from orbit" in the year 2025.

"With this contract signature, a critical milestone for establishing a new commercial sector in space will be achieved..." In almost 60 years of space activities, more than 5,550 launches have resulted in some 42,000 tracked objects in orbit, of which about 23,000 remain in space and are regularly tracked. With today's annual launch rates averaging nearly 100, and with break-ups continuing to occur at average historical rates of four to five per year, the number of debris objects in space will steadily increase. ClearSpace-1 will demonstrate the technical ability and commercial capacity to significantly enhance the long-term sustainability of spaceflight...
"This is the right time for such a mission..." says Luc Piguet, founder and CEO of ClearSpace. [I]n 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 'tow truck' to remove failed satellites from this highly trafficked region...." Supported within ESA's new Space Safety programme, the aim is to contribute actively to cleaning up space, while also demonstrating the technologies needed for debris removal.

"Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water," says ESA Director General Jan Wörner. "That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue. ESA's 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..."

"NASA 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 — 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."

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's 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 — eventually including multi-object capture. The ClearSpace-1 'chaser' 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.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The ESA Starts a New Commercial Sector in Space: Removing Space Debris

Comments Filter:
  • Do this for Earth! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday November 28, 2020 @05:36PM (#60774352)

    This is exactly the kind of thing we need for Earth. You then just need to make it a closed system by giving the bill to the polluters.

    • This is exactly the kind of thing we need down on Earth.*

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Meanwhile USA spacefArce is trying to find new ways of filling out orbit with millions of piece of battle debris because ERECTIONS (seriously because dickheads). Seriously why bother cleaning up those debris, what a waste of time, when you have a USA agency working hard at creating millions more bits of debri. Story should read ESA starts new mission in futility, cleaning up space debris when the USA is working just as hard as it can, in the most insane manner possible, to create more, so much, that any dev

  • by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Saturday November 28, 2020 @05:47PM (#60774366)

    Sounds like an excuse to get more money from its' citizens for something that doesn't matter.

    Maybe they are looking for tech they can use from what is floating around out there. They probably will steal some functional stuff too.

    • Ya, Space is a lot (two words) bigger than the oceans but, to quote Rick Sanchez, "There's literally everything in Space." [youtube.com]

    • Yeah but boats donâ(TM)t normally go at 28,000 km/h with little or no manoeuvring for years on end.
    • The parts of space that we actually use aren't actually *that* much bigger than the oceans. The volume of earth's oceans is order 10^9 km^3. The volume of LEO space is order 10^11 km^3. That's only 100 times bigger. OTOH, space trash is travelling 10000 times faster than ocean-current-propelled terrestrial trash. So, you only need about 1/10000 * 100 = 1/100 the amount of trash in space vs the ocean to encounter trash in space at the same probability of a piece floating by you in the ocean.
    • It matters for future access to space. You and the people that modded you up are simply ignorant of the matter.

      Also, access to new tech is better done here on earth, not in old satellites tumbling out of control.
    • Space is lot bigger than the oceans--but orbital slots around the Earth aren't. Space debris in orbit is a very big problem.
    • The mission is to grab hold of a piece of debris and forcibly deorbit it: i.e. slow it down and let it burn up in the atmosphere. A recovery mission would require a far larger and more complex vehicle that can reenter and land.

      "doesn't matter" is a gross underestimation of the problem. While we're not at Kessler Syndrome yet (i.e. orbital launch becomes untenably dangerous due to the high probability of a catastrophic collision), space agencies already take measures to reduce the amount of debris they put i

  • Bravo ESA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Saturday November 28, 2020 @05:50PM (#60774382)

    Exactly what the *SA's of the world should be doing.
    And NOT competing with Spacex.
    It is long past time to stop funding SLS, Ariane, etc and instead fund private industry to build the tech we need.

    • Well, SpaceX needs this... otherwise they'd be constantly avoiding the junk that would be on path to hit them. Remember what really wiped out Sirius' LEO project.

  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Saturday November 28, 2020 @06:06PM (#60774408)

    Yupi! Andale andale andale arriba arriba Yija!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • by Falos ( 2905315 )

      Someone always brings up Planetes.

      But you're not wrong.

      • by Anonymous Coward
        They use a number of methods to dispose of the debris (mainly by burning it via atmospheric reentry or through salvage), accomplished through the use of EVA suits.

        .

        That makes more sense than bringing it back to Earth, too expensive and time consuming.

  • Good Luck happens more frequently to Good Deeds. :)
    • Well, this is space-government work... US Space Force should kick in some money if they can't join.

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        Space Farce will only get involved it there is some way to enrich military contractors, they really have no other purpose.

  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday November 28, 2020 @06:43PM (#60774456)

    They spent, and will spend, all that money designing robots when all they needed to do was put sharks with freaking lasers on their heads into space.

  • by Ronin Developer ( 67677 ) on Saturday November 28, 2020 @07:47PM (#60774584)

    We used to be able to enjoy the starts. This crap and other mega-constellations are taking that legacy from us.

    • Oh BS. Astronomers have had software for years that can remove streaks created from orbiting material. What do you think, astronomers point the telescope and then press a button to take a snapshot? "Oh crap, a satellite streak, where there goes months of planning down the drain." Many snapshots over many different time periods are needed to create a usable image. Many snapshots in different wavelengths are also processed and combined through software to see the beautiful pictures from space created by astro
    • Light pollution has done orders of magnitude more damage to humanity's enjoyment of the stars than megaconstellations ever can.
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      Really? You can't enjoy the stars any longer knowing that there are satellites passing overhead? Sorry, but that's just weird. I actually enjoy watching the IIS pass overhead.

  • Salvage 1 aired in 1979 though it didn't last long.
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      That's because it sucked. Really, I was in high school and the absurdities were enough to piss me off. Their capsule was a frelling cement truck mixer, for cripes sakes.

  • ... is dilution.

    But the problem is no one dilutes properly. :-) it's too expensive. So no rockets full of spent nuclear fuel, toxic plastics and dioxins are headed into the sun. Nor do we inject pollutants into magma chambers hundreds of kilometres deep underground. Instead, we dump it in the oceans.

    So maybe dilution isn't the solution to pollution -- it's just a workaround. Maybe 'restoration' is the true solution. Bombard nuclear fuel to transmute it into harmless materials, and mix it with the tailings

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      The sun is too hard to get to, the delta V change is something like three times what it takes to get to Saturn.

      Best long-term strategy for disposal of nuclear waste is to vitrify it and deposit it at the bottom of the oceanic trenches so that it will eventually be sucked into the mantle.

  • Leaving boosters in MEO, getting an SRB fourth stage (wtf?) wired backwards, is there anything the Vega rocket can't fuck up?
  • Why burn stuff up in the atmosphere, when the materials could be used for building space stations, satellites, moon bases, mars bases, landers, and/or other spacecraft? Why not recycle it? Move it to a higher orbit, out of the way and clump a bunch of it together to be retrieved and use later.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] "The pilot centers on Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) who owns the Jettison Scrap and Salvage Co. and is a specialist in reclaiming trash and junk [from space] to sell as scrap. His dream is to recover equipment left on the Moon during Apollo Program missions. ... Harry builds a spaceship dubbed Vulture, made completely from reclaimed salvage and powered by a chemical called monohydrazine. The main body of Vulture is composed of a Texaco gasoline semi-trailer tank truck wit

  • I thought that some concern was already being given to de-orbiting (or parking) satellites and spent stages for the past few decades - and this VESPA device was launched in 2013.

    Now, I can imagine that this VESPA thing - an adapter to allow multiple payloads to hitch a ride on the primary payload - might not have much propellant, so the idea of giving it the ability to de-orbit itself after use would have increased the cost of the launch tremendously. But now that cost has to be paid with an extra launch t

  • My father and I did a "radio" style play for the family when I was in my teens, about space garbage collectors... and that was in the sixties.

    I claim first use of the idea!

Programmers do it bit by bit.

Working...