There are more than planets and stars in space. There's also a lot of junk, more than 9,000 metric tons worth as of 2022, according to NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office. It includes things like satellites that are no longer in use and debris that is intentionally discharged during space missions. As space exploration grows, so does the amount of debris, which could eventually pose a risk to Earth.

ClearSpace wants to fix that problem. The company's founder and CEO Luc Piguet tells Asking for a Trend's Josh Lipton the company is developing a "robotic capture system" that basically functions as a tow truck to remove large pieces of space debris from orbit.

Piguet explains that even though newer satellites are designed to fall back to Earth safely, there are ways ClearSpace can help extend the satellite's lifecycle. He notes that it takes a lot of propellant to de-orbit a satellite safely. Instead of using that propellant on de-orbiting, he says, that propellant can be used to extend the life of the satellite and then ClearSpace's services can be used to help it de-orbit safely.

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This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video Transcript

Reaching sustainability beyond earth and into space, there are thousands of satellites currently overhead with more than 9000 metric tons of space to bring in earth's orbit.

As thousands of more satellites are on track to launch to the end of this decade where taking a closer look how to clean up this space junk here with more is Luke Gay, clear space founder and Ceo Luke.

It is good to see you.

So let, let's start when we talk about space three space junk.

Luke, what do, what do we mean by that?

What are examples?

And how much of a problem is it?

So I think that the space debris are typically caused by either rocket bodies or satellites that are uh uh that are at the end of their life or that failed in orbits and that essentially generates uh that remain in orbit because of their, their velocity right to keep something in orbit has to go at 28,000 kilometers per hour in in low earth orbit.

And uh and those objects remain there and become essentially a projectile uh over time.

What can happen is that those, those objects go through fragmentation events that are caused either by a collision or an explosion on board.

Uh in general, it can generate very large fields of debris which all continue orbiting at the same speed.

So this is a major issue and it is actually rapidly increasing in, in lower orbit, in particular.

And Luke who's creating a lot of this space debris, I mean, is it the US China Russia who, who's responsible for a lot of this?

A little, a little of everyone, right?

Uh A lot of debris have been created by anti satellite missile tests in the past.

Um Today, there's a lot of rocket bodies that are from Russia.

Uh There's uh rocket bodies from China, there's, there's obviously American objects as well.

Uh There's some European one, there's a long list of objects that are up there.

They're typically cataloged.

So we know which, who owns which in general and then a lot of objects come from collision, in particular in, in 2009, there was this collision between the cosmos and Iridium satellite.

So Cosmos was a Russian S satellite iridium, uh an operational American communication satellite that collided and generated a large field of debris.

But uh but it's a big mix up there, which is, which belongs to a little of every, of every space faring nation.

And so Luke, so the purpose of your company is get there, clean it up, clean out this space debris.

How do you do that?

So what, what we, what we work on is developing if you want to sub or a or a tow truck for orbits.

Um We, we developing this, the intention is to go pick up larger pieces of debris or larger objects in space and then, and then help them support them for their reentry, getting back under control and then make sure that they're reentering to earth at once.

You're able to do that in orbit.

You're actually able to provide multiple other services.

Essentially.

What happens right now is that the space debris problem is if you want a side effect of an industry that doesn't have any servicing capability.

Instead of like if you would be operating the road transportation industry for 60 years without tow truck, you would have broken cars everywhere and that's more or less what we have in space.

If you think about it, the the road transportation industry are servicing and maintenance intervention integrated into it to the aviation industry or the shipping industry, this is not the case with the space industry which could not have that kind of services in orbit over the past years today, the technologies make it possible and that's what we're building a tow truck for space.

Luke, as you put it, I mean, it does sound expensive.

Luke, I mean, who who pays you for this?

Is it?

Do you look to governments?

So in, in the first phases of our development, it is essentially an institutional mission that we're leading today.

We have a mission with the European Space Agency for about 100 million.

There's another mission we work on with UK Space Agency.

There's a third mission where we work on the Life Extension, the capacity to capture Satell extended slides and most of the initial phase of development and non recurring engineering costs are essentially driven by institutional mission.

On the long term, we think that it is essentially the beneficiary of the space infrastructure that will uh pay for the for the services that are needed.

What happens today is that launching states are liable for the objects in orbit as long as they remain there and will require probably as things move on more and more ex expand the requirements for satellite operators to make sure that they leave us a safe and sustainable environment behind them.

And this is already we can already see this trend.

The US FCC moved from 25 years authorized for satellites in orbit to five years of authorized time in orbit after the life of a satellite operational life of the satellite.

So those changes are probably going to generalize across the globe, all the different launching states and requirements for satellite operators or agencies alike.

So just so I'm understanding because that's interesting.

So are you saying there's sort of efforts now um to stop the problem of space junk spa space debris before it even becomes a problem?

Me meaning you create spacecraft that's sort of designed a program to kind of de orbit on their own once once the mission is over.

So most of the satellites they are programmed to the orbit themselves on their own at the end of their mission.

Now there's two problems happening is that in general, satellite is a certain percentage of failure in orbit.

This means you cannot guarantee 100% of the satellite is going to be able to to the orbit at the end of their mission, the space environment is particularly harsh, which makes it even more difficult.

But beyond that, there's other cases where for for example, if you've got a really large satellite which is let's say 23 or four tons, a lot of a lot of the propellant of the satellite, it will be used just for the de orbiting because you cannot just drop it wherever over the surface of the earth.

You need to deorbit it over the South Pacific where there's no human life, right?

And this requires a huge amount of propellant in those kind of those cases of actually could use this their their propellant to extend the life of the satellite for several investment cycle and then use the servicing to de orbit them.

So there's different cases, use cases for the kind of services that we're building.

Um But in principle, it's either removing satellite that cannot get removed by themselves or satellites where actually the the economics of assisted removal makes a lot of sense.

Luke It, it is such a fascinating topic.

Thank you so much for taking the time to join the show and walk us through it.

We appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Thank you for having me.