The UK Space Agency has awarded Astroscale UK a $2.5 million contract to continue working on the Cleaning Outer Space Mission through Innovative Capture spacecraft, or COSMIC for short, an active debris removal solution.
Astroscale UK Managing Director Nick Shave expressed the company’s gratitude and continued commitment to the UK Space Agency’s decision to continue the effort.
“Our UK ADR mission design ensures a low-risk approach because it is based on flight-proven heritage from Astroscale missions in-orbit now such as ELSA-d and ADRAS-J, plus many mission elements from our U.K.-focused industrial supply chain with flight heritage,” he said. The aim of the project is to remove two of the United Kingdom’s inactive satellites from their orbits.
The British subsidiary’s ADR development is backed by about 100 companies, including Thales Alenia Space UK, Redwire and Airbus Defence and Space UK. The firm’s Zeus facility will house the operation, development and manufacturing of COSMIC.
Astroscale is also behind the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s space debris cleaning effort. The Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan mission, launched in February, has since achieved several milestones, including a safe and controlled fly-around of unprepared Japanese upper-stage rocket body floating in space.