Cleaning up space waste: ESA signs its very first mission | News | DW

A Swiss company is set to launch the first mission to clean up the space of our planet after the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday announced it was signing an agreement worth 86 million euros (102 million euros). dollars) with representatives of the Swiss start-up.

The company ClearSpace hopes to launch a special satellite by 2025 that would be able to remove space debris from Earth orbit. Currently, thousands of missing satellites and a lot of other small junk are circling the planet, posing an ever increasing collision risk for active satellites and even the International Space Station.

“Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting above the water,” ESA Director General Jan Wörner said during the announcement of the mission last December.

The founder and CEO of ClearSpace also warned that the danger will only increase with plans to send “hundreds, if not thousands of satellites” into low Earth orbit in the years to come.

“The need is clear for a ‘tow truck’ to remove faulty satellites from this high traffic area,” he said on the ESA website.

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How will the cleaning work?

The very first space clean-up mission, ClearSpace-1, would encounter an abandoned rocket fragment weighing around 112 kilograms (247 pounds). The abandoned object, dubbed Vespa (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter) helped set up a satellite in 2013. ESA says its rugged construction would make it a good starting point, with tracking missions aimed at capturing more objects. difficult, then several bits of debris at once.

After securing Vespa, the ClearSpace-1 spacecraft will push it out of orbit to burn in the atmosphere.

ESA said paying for ClearSpace rather than developing its own space debris disposal facility was a “new way for ESA to do business.” While the agency would provide “key expertise” and pay for the first assignment, the Swiss company would have to cover the rest of the costs through commercial investors.