It’s a sad irony, but an irony nonetheless, that this week the European Space Agency announced that a piece of space debris — left in orbit by a 2013 launch of Arianespace’s Vega rocket and the target of a removal mission — appears to have been struck by other space debris.
The ClearSpace-1 mission aims to demonstrate the process of “active debris removal” by grabbing the discarded rocket part with a spacecraft outfitted with robotic arms. The spacecraft is developed and operated by Swiss startup ClearSpace, which is backed by ESA and venture investors such as OTB Ventures and In-Q-Tel.
Separately, NASA and SpaceX are getting ready to launch the Crew-7 astronaut mission to the International Space Station. But the ISS itself may have to dodge space debris this afternoon, with station controllers considering changing its altitude.
The risk posed by space debris is not a novel problem for the industry, but it’s an ever more pressing one. Brian Weeden, a director at Secure World Foundation and one of the leading experts on the subject, said he “wasn’t hugely surprised” to hear the ClearSpace-1 target had been struck, “because we honestly don't have good statistics on collisions with really small pieces of debris.”
“We are pretty sure there's upwards of a million additional pieces of debris … between one and 10 centimeters that are up there … but they’re too small to currently track, so we can’t predict where they’re going to be. We can’t avoid them,” Weeden said.
Satellites and space debris are largely tracked via ground-based radars and telescopes. The U.S. military, through Space-Track.org, has the “most complete public catalog” of objects, Weeden noted. Europe, Russia and China each have their own tracking networks, too. Japan, Korea and India are working on it.
Meanwhile companies are working on commercial tracking services. Weeden called LeoLabs “the big leader” and noted others like ExoAnalytic, Slingshot Aerospace, HEO and NorthStar are also building out networks.
“We do a pretty good job, but not nearly good enough,” Weeden said.
Debris removal is a nascent part of the broader satellite servicing market (also known as In-Space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing, or ISAM). But there are a couple of still-theoretical sticking points, Weeden pointed out, as “no company or government has ever claimed damages to a space satellite as a result of a collision or debris.”
While there are mitigations in place for commercial satellite operators – such as FCC requirements for how long satellites can stay in orbit after finishing service – the “bigger question” to Weeden is around governments, who he says are the biggest culprits: “How do you incentivize governments to clean up their junk?” Followed shortly by: “How do they do it?”
Weeden envisions something like NASA’s Commercial Cargo program, where the government helps fund research and development and then holds a competition to award service contracts to companies.
“But someone in the government has to say, ‘We’re going to put up money to do this,’ and we’re talking about hundreds of millions or billions” of dollars, Weeden said.
