ESA to spend $ 102 million to remove single unwanted item from space

How much would you be willing to spend to remove a piece of space debris? Does $ 102 million sound like enough? That’s what a contract between the European Space Agency (ESA) and a Swiss start-up called ClearSpace SA is worth, and the whole contract is simply to remove a single piece of space debris.

Granted, this is a big chunk of debris – the Vega Secondary Payload Adapter (Vespa) weighs 112 kilograms (247 pounds). It was originally launched to release a satellite in 2013, and since then it has been drifting aimlessly around Earth, like so many other abandoned space junk. This type of contract is also the first of its kind and a large part of the cost of the project is devoted to the development of a technology not yet tested. Any technology capable of directly handling space waste is well worth the investment.

This space debris could potentially cause huge headaches for ships trying to successfully exit Earth’s gravity, or even cause a series of catastrophic events known as Kessler syndrome. Before the situation reached this tipping point, many teams began to develop technologies to capture or deorb space waste. The contract with ClearSpace is only the first of many such contracts that will be needed to ensure that we continue to have access to it.

Interestingly, even with a contract valued at 9 digits, ClearSpace will still need outside investment to cover the full cost of the mission. The company, which is a spin-off of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), will also be heavily engaged with experts from ESA to help plan and execute this critical mission. If something goes wrong, a failed mission could worsen the space debris problem rather than help solve it.

The technology Clearspace plans to use is a network that collapses on satellites. Several other companies have different technologies in development, including the RemoveDEBRIS consortium in the UK and Astroscale in Japan. Whichever technology is most effective, it will require massive scale-up to cope with the magnitude of this growing problem. So expect to see much larger contract amounts for cleaning up space debris in the near future.

Learn more:
EPFL – Giant Pac Man will swallow up space debris
Phys.org – Europe signs $ 102 million deal to bring space waste home
New Yorker – The Elusive Peril of the Space Junk

Main image credit: Public domain Unsplash / CC0