The Dangerous and Lucrative Business of Space Clean-Up

A satellite the size of a milk carton may show a way to prevent Earth’s neighborhood from turning into a junkyard.

The Nimbus, scheduled to soar on an Elon Musk rocket 280 miles (450 kilometers) above the planet in late 2024, will have a lifespan of just a few months, after which it could join the collection of man-made objects that are still in orbit years — sometimes decades — after their sell-by dates. Traveling uncontrolled at high speeds, such debris can collide with billion-dollar constellations owned by companies like SpaceX or crash into strategic assets of the US, China or other governments.

Instead, Norwegian startup Solstorm plans for tiny Nimbus to move itself out of the way by deploying a drag sail that will slow the satellite, helping it fall into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up harmlessly within a year.

NASA, the European Space Agency and others have experimented with such drag sails, and now Solstorm is one of several companies hoping to use them for satellite kamikaze journeys. “We are going to show the world how easy it is to make sustainable missions,” said Halvor Veiby, 27, Solstorm’s chief executive officer. “This is super-doable, without having super-complicated rocket engines.”

Since Sputnik 1 kicked off the space age in 1957, humans have left millions of pieces of used rockets, dead satellites and other detritus in orbit. Few people paid much attention to warnings about junk engulfing Earth, a dire future depicted in Walt Disney Co.’s 2008 Pixar classic Wall-E.

That’s changed as the proliferation of satellites has thrust the problem to the top of the space agenda.

By 2035, the Federal Aviation Administration expects 28,000 hazardous fragments from satellites in low-Earth orbit to survive reentry, injuring or killing one person on the ground every two years, the agency said in a report to Congress last September.

The number of active satellites has roughly quintupled over five years, driven largely by SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, and will grow as everyone from Amazon.com Inc. to Chinese state-owned enterprises target low-Earth orbit. The Federal Communications Commission has applications for more than 50,000 satellites, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a speech on March 18.

A dead Russian satellite on Feb. 28 came within 20 meters of a NASA spacecraft, a close encounter that could have sent thousands of pieces of debris hurdling toward other satellites. About a week later, there was another near miss when two old Soviet rocket bodies whizzed past one another with about 50 meters to spare, according to LeoLabs, a Silicon Valley company that tracks junk.

A stray piece of hardware from the International Space Station survived reentry in March and hit a house in Naples, Florida, NASA confirmed on April 15.

“Rocket science is already hard, but throw in a bunch of litter traveling at 7.5 kilometers per second and it gets a lot harder,” said Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow for LeoLabs. And with so many large, uncontrolled objects in orbit, the probability of unintentional collisions is increasing.

“It’s like rolling the dice over and over again: At some point they come up snake eyes,” he said. “Eventually something bad is going to happen.”

Companies have been quietly working for years on ways to track, capture or dispose of junk via technology like robotic arms, inflatable bags and high-power lasers, while also considering how to overcome the daunting costs of space cleanup.

“Debris removal is incredibly expensive,” said Victoria Samson, Chief Director, Space Security and Stability for Secure World Foundation, which promotes peaceful uses of space. “If you are taking down larger pieces, you’re talking millions — possibly even billions — of dollars.”

The nascent space-junk industry is nearing a turning point as companies move their ideas beyond the drawing board and into space, taking advantage of a growing awareness of the dangers junk poses.

ESA last August said rocket debris intended to be the target of a planned trash-removal mission in 2026 by startup ClearSpace had itself become a victim, splitting into pieces after a collision with another piece of junk. ClearSpace announced on April 24 a new target, a European satellite that’s been in low-Earth orbit since 2001.

Services in Orbit

Starfish Space, a Seattle startup backed by investors including Toyota Ventures, is working on a satellite-removal spacecraft, too, and after an unsuccessful attempt to dock with a satellite in mid-2023, will try again early next year.

For a satellite operator, “a cloud of debris flowing like a bunch of little cannonballs through your billions of dollars of infrastructure becomes an existential threat to your business,” said co-founder Austin Link. “The value we provide is ensuring that everything that they’ve invested is safe from the hazards of their own dead satellites.”

Startups stand to benefit from the growing interest of the Pentagon and other defense departments in protecting strategic orbital assets from junk, said Stefan Frey, chief executive officer of Vyoma GmbH, a Munich-based developer of a system using space-based cameras and artificial intelligence to track debris and other objects. Vyoma expects to send the first of a dozen satellites into orbit in early 2025.

With space becoming militarized, he said, “you need someone who gives you an early warning that something is coming at you.”

Among multinationals, Northrop Grumman Corp. last June announced an agreement for the Mission Robotic Vehicle, a spacecraft from subsidiary SpaceLogistics with robotic arms, to service an Intelsat communications satellite in geosynchronous Earth orbit, extending its life by at least six years. The MRV could launch as early as 2025, according to Northrop Grumman.

Airbus SE in November launched its Detumbler, a device 5 centimeters (2 inches) in diameter attached to a French satellite, and hopes to test the device’s ability to reduce the rate the satellite spins.

For future debris-removal missions, “you have to get attached to the target in order to perform an orbital maneuver,” explained Airbus debris coordinator Frederic Payot. “A stable, cooperative target is really a must.”

Space Lasers

Tokyo-based satellite operator Sky Perfect JSAT Holdings Inc. announced on Jan. 30 a new company, Orbital Lasers Co., that it said will develop satellite-based lasers for debris removal, with service planned by 2030.

Another Japanese company, EX-Fusion Inc. last October signed an agreement with a subsidiary of Australian defense and space technology company Electro Optic Systems Holdings Ltd. to use earth-based lasers to track debris. The companies hope to measure fragments as small as 10 centimeters, which “can pose just as much of a threat to space assets” as large pieces, said Koichi Masuda, EX-Fusion’s chief revenue officer.

EX-Fusion eventually wants to use lasers to deorbit such pieces, reducing their velocity enough to fall into the atmosphere. There are a lot of obstacles to overcome first, including costs. For instance, debris removal would require lasers 100 times more powerful than those used for debris tracking, said Masuda.

There’s also the question of ownership. According to international law, debris remains the property of whoever left it, even decades later. That means companies need permission before attempting to debris-removal missions. Russia and China account for much of the junk in space, and given current geopolitical tensions, getting approval isn’t easy.

“Policy-wise it’s really tough,” said Astroscale Chief Operating Officer Chris Blackerby, a former NASA Asia attache, in an interview before the announcement of the IPO. “If there’s an abandoned object in space, we can’t just go up and grab it.”

Debris removal companies also need to grapple with a variation of the tragedy of the commons, in which individuals lack incentives to protect shared resources. Removing a big piece of debris “reduces the risk for everybody else within that orbit,” he said, but getting others to pay for that benefit is a challenge.

Since removing junk in orbit is so costly and politically complicated, companies should look to more achievable goals, said Abhishek Tripathi, director of mission operations at the University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory and veteran of NASA and SpaceX.

“We should focus on mitigation and preventing space debris,” he said. For instance, spacecraft should have end-of-life plans to deorbit safely or move to a graveyard orbit.

Optimists believe the growing number of in-space demonstrations of debris technology will provide a boost.

“Having the capability demonstrated and ready to go makes it much easier to get people to have a conversation,” said McGrath, the Manchester professor. “Now that we have shown we have the capability to do this, we need to find a way to make it happen.”