The European Space Agency will use a giant claw to capture space junk

(Photo via European Space Agency / ClearSpace SA)

The European Space Agency, in partnership with Swiss start-up ClearSpace SA, will launch the first active space debris removal mission in 2025.

ESA has signed an 86 million euro ($ 103 million) agreement to purchase the unique service, which, in five years, will capture the top of a Vespa (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter) from the European launcher Vega.

After the 2013 Vega flight, the Vespa was left in what ESA called a “phased disposal unit” in low orbit, in accordance with the space debris mitigation regulations. ClearSpace-1 will use the agency’s developed arm technology (which looks strikingly similar to the claw in those arcade games) to capture the device – the size of a small satellite – and perform a controlled atmospheric reentry.

As of October 2019, the U.S. space surveillance network has reported nearly 20,000 man-made objects orbiting the Earth, including over 2,200 operational satellites. And those are just the elements big enough to track; there are millions of pieces of tiny debris floating in the cosmos, just waiting to crash into the spaceship.

In the past six years, the International Space Station has twice narrowly avoided a collision with the remains of old Russian satellites. And just last month, an out-of-service segment of sputnik and a discarded Chinese rocket nearly crashed into each other, escaping a severe impact of about 230 feet.

“ClearSpace-1 will demonstrate the technical prowess and commercial capability to significantly improve the long-term sustainability of space flight,” according to an ESA press release.

“With this signing of the contract, a fundamental milestone will be reached for the creation of a new commercial sector in space,” continued the European Space Agency. “Buying the mission in an end-to-end service contract, rather than developing an ESA-defined spacecraft for internal operations, represents a new way for ESA to do business.”

With a little help from its Council of Ministers, the European Space Agency is purchasing the initial mission; ClearSpace SA will raise the remaining funds through commercial investors.

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