#Astroscale's ongoing #Orpheus mission, a £5.15 million collaborative UK defence project tasked with enhancing space domain awareness (SDA) and tracking space weather. Critical Design Review (CDR) was completed in April.

As part of national debris removal efforts #Astroscale has developed robotic arm and gripper technologies. Unlike satellites built with dedicated docking plates, these systems are engineered to match the tumble of and physically grasp unprepared, arbitrary historical debris.

By eliminating these massive ticking clocks before they fragment into millions of untrackable hyper-velocity bullets, #Astroscale aims to preserve long-term access to space. 🇯🇵

And since then, #Astroscale and others have continued ambitious approaches to debris removal. The program centers on mathematical necessity: removing roughly five large, heavy cataloged objects per year from the most congested LEO bands is viewed as critical to stabilizing the orbital environment.

A good overview of the #Kessler Syndrome. This is just one of those catastrophes that will happen someday and seem so avoidable in retrospect.

More to come about possible prospective solutions in the coming days….

#spacejunk #astroscale