ELSA-M (End of Life Services by Astroscale-Multiple)

2023: Space Cleaner Announcement

In mid-June 2023, aerospace company Astroscale unveiled the End of Life Services by Astroscale-Multiple (ELSA-M). It will become the world's first commercial space tug with the ability to vault many inactive satellites from orbit. The launch of the device is scheduled for 2025.

The ELSA-M is designed to capture and disorbit objects from already decommissioned satellites in space. According to Astroscale, as of June 2023, more than 2.2 thousand decommissioned satellites are in orbit, because of this there were more than 630 cases of collisions in orbit with the formation of other debris.

ELSA-M (End of Life Services by Astroscale-Multiple)

According to information, NASA the question of how to reduce the number and clear the orbit of space debris is increasingly concerned with space flight specialists and astronomers, since companies such as " SpaceX s Starlink," OneWeb Amazon Kuiper and others are planning LEO satellite constellations with thousands of satellites. These all satellites have a fixed lifespan, and while many are designed to disorbit and fiery death in the atmosphere, not Lands all do so successfully due to various accidents and failures in. ON

Astroscale launched the first flight of its previous iteration of the vehicle, ELSA-D, in 2021 and successfully demonstrated the possibility of magnetic re-capture that year. A few months later, the company announced the suspension of the spacecraft after the detection of abnormal conditions on the spacecraft.

A new video from Astroscale shows the process of disorbiting the new ESLA-M. First, the spacecraft performs a visual inspection of the client satellite before performing alignment and docking maneuvers. ELSA-M then uses its engines to reduce the satellite client's orbit to an atmospheric trajectory, where it safely decays as it enters the atmosphere. After the client satellite enters a destructive course, the ESLA-M separates and adjusts its own orbit to meet the next target.

On June 13, 2023, Astroscale also announced the release of the 2nd generation docking plate, which developers say has a lifetime of over 15 years in orbit. The plate will allow deorbiting spacecraft to more easily capture satellites in need of deorbiting, offering what the company calls "a much-needed starting point for diverse service options and a more responsible use of Earth's orbital resources."

Astroscale is funded in part by the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency and aims to be the first company to demonstrate the commercial use of this multi-satellite orbital logging service. In 2021, Astroscale's UK subsidiary signed an agreement worth $3.2 million with megaconstellar manufacturer OneWeb, which plans to launch more than 6,000 satellites into low Earth orbit to support its global communications services. The partnership aims to provide reliable services for the disposal of OneWeb satellites as parts of its expanding low Earth orbit network go out of service.

The ESLA-M demonstration is scheduled for 2024, which will scrap an inoperable OneWeb satellite equipped with a docking dish adapted for capture by the ELSA-M grab device.^[1]

Notes