His Oxfordshire Astroscale-UK-based company plans to ship a sophisticated robotic arm to pick up dead hardware. Then they plan to send it down to burn in the atmosphere.
The UK government is running a competition to find the best solution to clean up historical ruins. The winner will showcase their technology in late 2026 or early 2027. The UK Space Agency is also looking at plans developed by ClearSpace. This Swiss company also has a UK subsidiary that receives R&D funds from the agency. There's trash in orbit, from piles of old rocket parts to accidentally dropped astronaut instruments and even paint splatters. With thousands of satellites to be launched over the next few years, without active cleaning services, parts of the sky will soon be rendered unusable by collisions.
The British team has released the details of the so-called Cosmic mission, which is its participation in the government competition.
This mission stands for Clearing Outer Space Mission by Innovative Capture. Here he stated that a 600-700 kg spacecraft will be launched into orbit to chase and capture an ancient satellite that is currently floating in space uncommanded. The idea is for a robot arm to reach out and lock onto the target and take control of it.
One of the enabling technologies here is dating and proximity operations, said Nick Shave, managing director of Astroscale UK. He explained that the really difficult things are to approach a vehicle, do somersaults with it safely, keep up with the spin speed, and then dock safely without creating more. I think we have a really strong talent for that. "If we can prove that more than we've done to date, then I think we'll start to open up a market for debris removal," he said.
Source:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64864956
