TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The British subsidiary of Japan\u2019s Astroscale is preparing for a critical design review early next year of a servicer that will attempt to remove a OneWeb broadband satellite from low Earth orbit (LEO) in 2026.<\/p>
\u201cWe\u2019ve completed a lot of the subsystem level developments and we\u2019ve bought a lot of the flight hardware,\u201d Astroscale UK managing director Nick Shave said in an interview.<\/p>
The 500-kilogram servicer for the ELSA-M program, or End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-Multiple, is currently in a \u201cflatsat\u201d phase where its various components are laid out on a clean room table for testing and checkout.<\/p>
\u201cGNC [guidance, navigation, and control] on the program is quite complex, as you can imagine,\u201d Shave said. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a lot of Rendezvous and Proximity Operations activities and a lot of it is novel.\u201d<\/p>
Astroscale has a dedicated team of 40 people in the United Kingdom working on finalizing the flight software ELSA-M would use to approach and capture a OneWeb spacecraft that is no longer operating, later releasing it on course to burn up in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>
The servicer would use a capture mechanism compatible with magnetic docking plates on most of U.K.-based OneWeb\u2019s more than 600 satellites.<\/p>
The demonstration is a precursor to a commercial de-orbit business Astroscale hopes to start offering toward the end of this decade, alongside other ventures such as Switzerland\u2019s ClearSpace and Starfish of the United States.<\/p>
After finalizing algorithms and completing the critical design review, Astroscale plans to integrate ELSA-M subsystems during 2025 for a launch Shave said would likely occur in the second quarter of 2026.<\/p>
Astroscale had aimed to conduct the demo mission this year. However, OneWeb, which was sold to French fleet operator Eutelsat in 2023, only recently received<\/a> a contract as part of its public-private partnership with the European Space Agency to advance the mission.<\/p>