Elsa-d, the world’s first commercial mission to demonstrate a space debris removal system, will be launched on March 20 at 06:07 GMT from the Baikonur Food Modroom in Kazakhstan.
The mission was developed by Astroscale, a Japanese-British company, and is operated from the British Orbital Operational Center (IOCC) at the Satellite Applications Catapult in Harwell near Oxford. The End-of-Life Services at Astroscale Demonstration Mission (Elsa-d) is a small satellite designed to find, meet and cling to an unwanted satellite. It will then push it into the earth’s atmosphere, where it burns up.
The removal of space debris is the key to sustainability in space, which will ensure that new satellites can be used without the risk of colliding with old satellites. The European Space Agency estimates that 3,600 working satellites are in orbit, and that more than 28,000 pieces of debris are being detected by the U.S. space agency network. In the next decade, more than 10,000 satellites will be launched, mostly from satellite Internet providers such as SpaceX or OneWeb. For this demonstration, Elsa-d will take a smaller spacecraft with her to act as a piece of space debris. It will execute a number of encounter and recording scenarios before burning up.