Astroscale Holdings Inc. is the first private company with a vision to secure the safe and sustainable development of space for the benefit of future generations, and the only company solely dedicated to on-orbit servicing across all orbits. Founded in 2013, Astroscale is developing innovative and scalable solutions across the spectrum of on-orbit servicing missions, including Life Extension, In-situ Space Situational Awareness, End of Life services, and Active Debris Removal, to create sustainable space systems and mitigate the growing and hazardous buildup of debris in space. Astroscale is also defining the business cases and working with government and commercial stakeholders to develop norms, regulations, and incentives for the responsible use of space. Headquartered in Japan, Astroscale has an international presence with subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, and Singapore. Astroscale is a rapidly expanding venture company, working to advance safe and stable growth in space and solve a growing environmental concern. End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration, the company's first on-orbit demonstration of debris capture and removal, is scheduled to take place in late 2020.
History
Astroscale was founded in 2013 by IT entrepreneur Nobu Okada in Singapore. In April 2013, Okada attended an academic conference in Germany on space development where space junk was a hot topic. Many experts gave presentations on the issue and talked about potential solutions, but Okada was not impressed because no one had a real plan of action. Ten days later, he founded Astroscale to tackle the issue. On February 16, 2015, the company raised US $7.7 million in venture capital financing. The capital was used to set up an R&D facility and office in Tokyo to accelerate the development of satellites and future space debris removal missions. On March 1, 2016, Astroscale announced a further US $35 million in funding and on March 21, 2017, incorporated Astroscale Ltd. in the United Kingdom. Astroscale announced it had completed a Series C funding round and raised US $25 million on July 14, 2017. On November 21, 2017, Astroscale and Surrey Satellite Technology signed a Memorandum of Understanding to pursue joint opportunities in areas of innovative on-orbit technologies and missions designed to safeguard the orbital environment for future generations. As a first step, Astroscale contracted SSTL to supply the Client satellite and avionics for its ELSA-d mission. Astroscale established a ground station in Totsuka-ku, Yokohama on July 4, 2018. The primary purpose of the ground station is to enable the operation of ELSA-d. On July 24, 2018, Astroscale received a £4 million grant from the Government of the United Kingdom and established the National In-orbit Servicing Control Centre Facility at the Satellite Applications Catapult in Harwell, Oxfordshire. The facility will support advanced robotics activities in the very hostile environment of space, specifically enabling the provision of a commercial service for de-orbiting small satellites. The new facility will initially control Astroscale's ELSA-d mission. On October 31, 2018, Astroscale obtained additional funding of US $50 million, bringing total amount of capital investment to US $102 million. Astroscale announced the incorporation of Astroscale U.S. Inc. and the opening of its Denver office at the 35th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. With an additional US $30 million secured in an extension of its Series D investment round, Astroscale announced its plans to expand its United States presence, focusing on business development, policy influence and technology growth. On January 23, 2020, Astroscale announced it had been awarded a grant of up to US$4.5 million from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's "Innovation Tokyo Project" to build a roadmap for commercializing active debris removal services. On June 3, 2020, Astroscale U.S. Inc. announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the intellectual property and other assets and to hire certain members of the staff of Effective Space Solutions R&D Ltd., an Israeli satellite life-extension and servicing company. These moves make Astroscale the only company solely dedicated to on-orbit services across low-earth and geostationary orbits and bring the company closer to realizing its vision of orbital sustainability for future generations.
Between 2015-2017 Astroscale designed, built, tested and launched a 25kg micro-lite satellite called IDEA OSG 1, an In-situ Debris Environment Analysis mission. The mission was designed to measure sub-millimetre size debris in low-Earth orbit. Unfortunately, the launch vehicle failed, and IDEA OSG 1 never made it to orbit.
End-of-Life Services by Astroscale (ELSA)
The End-of-Life Services by Astroscale program is a spacecraft retrieval service for satellite operators. ELSA-d is the first mission to demonstrate the core technologies necessary for debris docking and removal and is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2020. ELSA-d consists of two spacecraft, a Servicer and a Client, launched stacked together. The Servicer is equipped with proximity rendezvous technologies and a magnetic docking mechanism, while the Client has a ferromagnetic plate which enables it to be docked with. The Servicer will repeatedly release and dock the Client in a series of technical demonstrations proving the capability to find and dock with debris. Demonstrations include target search, target inspection, target rendezvous, and both non-tumbling and tumbling docking. ELSA-d will be operated from the National In-orbit Servicing Control Centre Facility in Harwell, UK, which is being developed by Astroscale as a key part of the ground segment.
Active Debris Removal by Astroscale (ADRAS)
In February 2020, Astroscale announced its selection as the commercial partner for Phase I of JAXA’s first debris removal project. The JAXA Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration project consists of two mission phases to achieve one of the world’s first debris removal missions of a large object, the first of which has been awarded to Astroscale. This first phase will be demonstrated by the end of the Japan Fiscal Year 2022 and will focus on data acquisition on an upper stage Japanese rocket body. Astroscale will be responsible for the manufacturing, launch and operations of the satellite that will characterize the rocket body, acquiring and delivering movement observational data to better understand the debris environment.
