Astroscale toasts spacecraft mission success
The company is the UK subsidiary of Astroscale Holdings Inc. – hailed as market leader in satellite servicing and long-term orbital sustainability across all orbits. It has successfully completed the CDR for the ELSA-M (End of Life by Astroscale-Multiple) In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD) spacecraft.
Set to launch in 2026, ELSA-M will be the world’s first commercial end-of-life service for prepared satellites – those designed with technologies such as an interface that will enable docking and removal.
The ELSA-M IOD mission is supported by the UK Space Agency through the European Space Agency’s Connectivity and Secure Communications Directorate. It is majority financed by Astroscale private funding and the remainder via co-contributions from the UK Space Agency via ESA and Eutelsat.
This world-first Rendezvous Proximity Operations (RPO) mission is being designed, manufactured and operated by Astroscale UK at the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire, where the company supports a workforce of over 220 high-skilled people.
This CDR milestone has been validated via detailed review by a customer team of both ESA and Eutelsat representatives across all engineering. programme management and product assurance disciplines. The milestone also confirms the UK’s leadership in providing Active Debris Removal (ADR) services globally, a vital step towards In-Orbit Servicing, Assembly & Manufacturing (ISAM) – the fastest growing segment of the space industry.
Nick Shave, Managing Director, Astroscale UK, said: “Completing the Critical Design Review for ELSA-M is both a major step for the mission itself and also a major achievement for the UK ISAM industry. The mission is a true partnership between Astroscale UK, the UK Space Agency, ESA and Eutelsat with many industrial partners in the Astroscale ISAM supply chain across all regions of the UK.
“With the ever-growing number of satellites in Earth's orbit, the robust RPO and spacecraft capture capability provided by ELSA-M will revolutionise the delivery of repeatable ADR and other ISAM services as part of a future circular space economy.”
Joshua King, Telecommunications Investment Lead at the UK Space Agency, added: “We are excited to support Astroscale UK's pioneering ELSA-M mission, which represents a significant leap forward in satellite servicing and orbital sustainability.
“This milestone not only underscores the UK's leadership in ADR but also highlights our commitment to providing new technologies and capabilities to support satellite communications. The successful completion of the Critical Design Review is a testament to the exceptional collaboration between Astroscale, ESA, and Eutelsat within the Sunrise Partnership, and we look forward to the successful launch next year.”
The IOD mission is supported by the UK Space Agency through the Sunrise Partnership Project which is a Public-Private Partnership between ESA and Eutelsat. The Sunrise Partnership Project is part of ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) programme, within ESA’s Connectivity and Secure Communications Directorate, which aims to develop solutions for future generation telecommunication satellite missions.
Laurent Jaffart, Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications at ESA, commented: “Space is a common good, like the oceans, and we need to treat it responsibly. ESA welcomed Astroscale’s active engagement and signature of ESA’s Zero Debris Charter in June 2024, which contains high-level guiding principles and specific jointly defined targets to achieve zero debris by 2030.
“We are pleased to be supporting Astroscale to demonstrate the commercial viability of space debris removal, building on state-of-the-art technologies to create new missions that attract talent and investment. ESA fosters European and Canadian innovation in the highly competitive global satellite market.”
Scottez Guillaume, Senior Director for Innovation at Eutelsat Group said: "Astroscale's successful CDR marks a positive progression for our joint efforts to support, test, and validate innovative in-orbit servicing technologies, crucial for the long-term preservation of space as a valuable natural resource. With this milestone we look forward to our continued collaboration with ESA, the UK Space Agency, and Astroscale to advance our mission."
ELSA-M improves upon the capabilities developed and successfully demonstrated by Astroscale’s ELSA-d mission. Launched in 2021, ELSA-d validated Astroscale's end-of-life technologies by completing unprecedented in-orbit demonstrations, including repeated magnetic captures and controlled close-approach rendezvous operations between the two spacecraft.
ELSA-M is already progressing at full speed for the next phase, which includes the assembly, integration, and testing of the spacecraft flight model at Astroscale’s facility in Harwell, launch and commissioning and in-orbit demonstration activities. This demonstration includes successfully docking, de-orbiting and releasing a Eutelsat OneWeb client spacecraft managed through Astroscale’s in-house satellite operations facility.
Since its first successful launch in March 2021, Astroscale has proven rendezvous and proximity operations technologies in orbit during the ELSA-d and ADRAS-J missions, establishing the company as a leader in on-orbit servicing.
Astroscale spacecraft have been chosen for pioneering missions with JAXA, the U.S. Space Force, the European Space Agency, the UK Space Agency, and Eutelsat OneWeb. As more satellite operators adopt on-orbit servicing to routinely inspect, relocate, remove, and extend the life of spacecraft, the potential of a circular space economy — and a future of no waste in space — is being unlocked.
Headquartered in Japan, Astroscale has a global presence with subsidiaries in the UK, the US, France, and Israel.