ClearSpace has been selected by the UK Space Agency to lead the UK’s first national active space debris removal mission, which will capture and remove two defunct UK-registered satellites from low Earth orbit.
As prime contractor, ClearSpace will design, develop and deliver the UK Active Debris Removal (UK ADR) mission for the UK Space Agency (UKSA), with operations targeted for 2029, subject to final mission and launch scheduling. SatNews reported that the contract is worth about £61 million (US$80 million) and followed a competitive procurement against bids from Astroscale and Starfish Space.
The spacecraft will demonstrate autonomous guidance, navigation and control, and capture technologies able to interact safely with objects not designed for servicing. The UKSA said these capabilities are essential to a wider UK market for in-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing (ISAM).
Alice Bunn, co-director of the UK Space Agency, said, “This mission is about much more than removing debris. It is about developing the capabilities that will enable future servicing, assembly and manufacturing in orbit.”
Under the contract, the UKSA will define the national requirement and oversee performance, while ClearSpace is responsible for design, development and delivery of the spacecraft. The approach moves beyond funding innovation toward government acting as an institutional customer for nationally important space services, according to the release.
The award follows the UK Space Strategy published in September, which identifies ISAM as one of four priority subsectors for accelerated development.
Rob Atchison, managing director of ClearSpace UK, said, “Our next step is to design, build and test a spacecraft that can get close, safely, to an object never designed to be caught, and take control of it. We will do this with partners across the UK supply chain, working towards launch in 2029.”
ClearSpace was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from Swiss university EPFL and is headquartered in Luxembourg, with teams in Switzerland, the UK, Germany and France. Its best-known program is ClearSpace-1, which the European Space Agency (ESA) commissioned in 2020 to remove an unprepared, uncooperative object from orbit.
ClearSpace is also working with ESA on PRELUDE, an in-orbit inspection and proximity operations mission targeting launch in 2027, and on Phoenix, a geostationary orbit life-extension mission for which it signed a new ESA contract in September.
