On Thursday, October 15, 2026, the U.K. government awarded Luxembourg-headquartered in-orbit servicing company ClearSpace a prime contract valued at approximately £61 million ($80 million) to deliver the final operational phase of its national Active Debris Removal (ADR) mission.
Selected following a competitive procurement against bids from Astroscale and Starfish Space, ClearSpace will lead the design, manufacturing, and operational execution of a robotic spacecraft tasked with capturing and deorbiting two defunct British satellites.
Procurement Competition and Program Heritage
The contract award concludes a multi-year competitive evaluation overseen by the UK Space Agency to establish sovereign national capabilities in space sustainability and in-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM). ClearSpace previously executed technical feasibility studies alongside partner Orbit Fab to integrate in-space refueling capabilities under Phase 2 of the Clearing the LEO Environment with Active Removal (CLEAR) study, besting competing concepts including Astroscale’s COSMIC debris removal architecture.
The servicer’s engineering baseline heavily leverages the capture architecture engineered by ClearSpace’s Swiss division for an OHB-led European Space Agency (ESA) mission targeting the removal of the Proba-1 satellite, which is likewise scheduled to fly in 2029 following earlier orbital heritage on ClearSpace-1 launch agreements with Arianespace.
Dual-Capture Architecture and Servicer Specifications
The ADR spacecraft incorporates autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) avionics paired with multi-arm robotic manipulators:
- Mission Profile: The servicer will perform orbital phasing to match trajectories with two undisclosed, non-cooperative U.K.-licensed satellites currently adrift in low Earth orbit (LEO).
- Mechanical Capture: Uses robotic clamping mechanisms to grapple external structures of targets that lack standardized grappling fixtures or docking adapters.
- Deorbit Trajectory: Following capture of the first derelict target, the spacecraft will lower the combined stack’s perigee to accelerate atmospheric disposal, release the object into an orbital decay path, and subsequently boost its altitude to rendezvous with and capture the second satellite.
Mission Manifest and 2029 Orbital Schedule
ClearSpace UK will manage industrial delivery and mission operations, targeting launch in 2029. By demonstrating sequential capture and disposal across two discrete target spacecraft on a single mission, the program aims to qualify reusable orbital servicing architectures while mitigating debris collision hazards along congested low Earth orbit corridors.
