ClearSpace-1
The ClearSpace-1 (ClearSpace One) mission is an ESA Space Debris Removal mission led by ClearSpace SA, a Swiss startup company. The mission's objective is to remove a VESPA (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter) from orbit. The mission aims to demonstrate technologies for rendezvous, capture, and deorbit for end-of-life satellites and to build a path to space junk remediation. Destructive reentry will destroy both the captured satellites and itself.

Overview 
In 2019, the company won a tender for a European Space Agency Space Safety program contract in the Active Debris Removal/In-Orbit Servicing (ADRIOS) project. It will target the ESA's VESPA from the 2013 Vega flight VV02 for de-orbiting. The mission contract, worth 86 million euros, was signed in November 2020. As of January 2023, ClearSpace-1 is expected to be launched in 2026 on a Vega-C launch vehicle.

The VESPA that ClearSpace-1 hopes to capture is the size of a washing machine and weighs about 112 kilograms.  ClearSpace-1's device has been described as a four-armed "space claw" that will grip VESPA and steer it back into the Earth's atmosphere, where both will be destroyed via destructive reentry.

Other attempts 
The ClearSpace-1 mission was preceded by e.Deorbit, a space debris removal mission under planning by ESA in 2010s. In the end, the e.Deorbit mission was not implemented, the satellite was not built and the whole e.Deorbit mission was cancelled. ClearSpace-1 continues the ESA space debris removal aspirations.

Tokyo-based Astroscale is a space debris removal company testing a removal device called End-of-Life Services (ELSA-d) that successfully demonstrated many of the key technologies required for space debris removal in 2021 and 2022, including demonstrating magnetic docking with a client in 2021 and close approach RPO in 2022 and ELSA-d is now in its de-orbiting phase.

In 2022, the UK Space Agency awarded £4 million to ClearSpace-1 and Astroscale to remove non-operational British satellites by 2026.

References

External links
 ClearSpace official homepage

Proposed satellites
Technology demonstration satellites
Satellites of Switzerland
2020s in Switzerland
2026 in spaceflight
Space debris