The UK Space Agency (UKSA) has started a £75.6m tender process to launch the first UK mission to tackle space debris.
The aim of the proposed active debris removal (ADR) mission is to use British ingenuity to design a spacecraft capable of capturing and de-orbiting two defunct UK-licensed satellites from low-Earth orbit (LEO).
Once these satellites have been safely guided into the Earth’s atmosphere, they will burn up. This is a step towards removing space debris, which includes old satellites, spent rocket stages and fragments from collisions in orbit.
The UKSA estimates that 140 million pieces of space debris smaller than 1cm, and over 54,000 tracked objects larger than 10cm, are in LEO.
This orbiting junk can collide with vital space infrastructure, including satellite networks that power GPS, weather forecasting and emergency communications.
Last year, a defunct Russian satellite broke up into nearly 200 pieces in LEO, forcing astronauts on board the International Space Station to seek...