EPFL startup heads a mission to clean up space

ClearSpace, a spin-off of EPFL's Space Center (eSpace), has been selected to lead a major European Space Agency (ESA) space debris de-orbiting project with a total budget topping €100 million. The startup and its consortium will develop and fly the first-ever mission to capture and remove a disused ESA asset from Space. In an unprecedented move, the European Space Agency (ESA) has selected a startup to lead a consortium and execute a landmark Active Debris Removal (ADR) mission under the recently introduced Space Safety Programme. EPFL spin-off ClearSpace will head the ADRIOS activity, developing technologies to capture and de-orbit space debris. The ClearSpace-1 mission will involve recovering a now-obsolete Vespa Upper Part, a payload adapter that once formed part of the Agency's Vega payload rocket. The ClearSpace-led consortium was selected out of 13 European and Canadian consortia that included the leading names in the Space and Avionics industry. Eight ESA member states have pledged funding for the ClearSpace-1 mission, and the budget was approved at the Space19+ Ministerial meeting in Seville, Spain, in late November.