How cleaning up space debris could grow to become a big business

Thousands of satellites are circling the Earth, and when they die, they don't just disappear. Neither do the rockets that put them there.

This week, a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage crashed into the moon, more than a year after it was left on an uncontrolled trajectory following a lunar mission.

Closer to Earth, defunct satellites, spent rocket parts and other debris can remain in orbit for years, adding to an increasingly congested environment and an elevated risk of collisions.

Now, a growing group of companies is betting that cleaning up this orbital junk, and servicing satellites before they become it, could become a business in its own right.

Space infrastructure has become foundational for the global economy, crucial in everything from financial transactions and GPS navigation to weather forecasting and missile tracking. 

"Space is a global commons, and we're mucking it up," Andrew Faiola, commercial vice president at Tokyo-listed orbital services firm Astroscale, told CNBC. "We do need to clean it up. There are consequences to just sort of having a throwaway culture in space."

An interactive map developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin shows the congestion in real time in low-Earth orbit, where satellites operate alongside debris from decades of space activity, including U.S. and former Soviet rockets and satellites.

Meanwhile, OrbitRadar tracks nearly 30,000 objects in space, of which about 18,500 are active satellites, and the rest are debris fragments or spent rocket bodies. 

Faiola compared a collision in space to a grenade hitting a car, creating a cloud of debris with small pieces falling into unpredictable orbits – sometimes too small to track from Earth – making them difficult to avoid.

Even tiny fragments traveling at thousands of miles an hour can severely damage satellites, or worse, pierce the space suits of astronauts carrying out work outside their vehicles.

Even if no additional satellites were launched, the amount of debris in orbit would continue to grow because objects are fragmenting faster than debris naturally re-enters the atmosphere, Tim Flohrer, the European Space Agency's Head of Space Debris, told CNBC, warning that it could make "certain orbits unusable."

"Active satellites must perform an increasing number of collision-avoidance maneuvers to dodge out of the way of other satellites and fragments of space debris," he said, highlighting several debris removal and in-orbit servicing missions it is supporting.

Astroscale develops spacecraft for debris removal and other in-orbit services.

"That means that we're building spacecraft that are designed to be very agile, designed to safely operate in and around other spacecraft in orbit," Faiola said.

It is one of the few commercial companies that has demonstrated the ability to dock with another spacecraft in orbit through a magnetic capture system. That's a difficult task given objects in lower Earth orbit move at the speed of 7 or 8 kilometers per second – faster than the speed of a bullet – and can tumble uncontrollably. 

Astroscale is also seeing growing demand from the defense sector, where its technology has potential military applications, Faiola said.

While the company reported a 142% revenue surge in the fiscal year ended April and is building a sizable order book, it is still burning cash and posting large operating losses. It continues to derive a big share of project income from government grants. 

This is still a nascent, deep-tech market, so initial contracts are coming largely from space agencies and governments, which will demonstrate to the private sector that this is a viable business, Faiola said. "In the future, we would expect that this would be paid for by operators of constellations of spacecraft."

Luxembourg-based startup ClearSpace, meanwhile, sees debris removal as part of a potentially much larger market for inspecting, repairing and maintaining spacecraft in orbit.

"Essentially, we build the servicing layer for the space infrastructure," ClearSpace's co-founder and CEO Luc Piguet told CNBC.

He compared the opportunities in the broader space services market to the maintenance industries that have developed around roads, shipping and aviation. Without servicing, Piguet said, motorways "would be littered with cars." Space, he argued, will increasingly need similar infrastructure.

Supported by European and national space agencies, it has developed a satellite with a "claw" that can capture debris and bring it back to Earth, or push it out further into space to what is known as the "space graveyard," where it is less likely to collide with objects.

ClearSpace raised 26 million euros ($30 million) in 2023 and plans another funding round later this year.

While funding remains a challenge, investors have become much more knowledgeable about the space industry in recent years, moving beyond basic questions about how satellites work to scrutinizing supply chains and lead times, Piguet said.

"Three years ago, talking with investors about space, the first question [was], 'How do you get to orbit? How does it work?'" he said. Today, many investors have already backed companies such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab and "will ask the right questions," he added.

At the same time, defense investment, including space defense, in Europe has accelerated dramatically as a result of the current geopolitical situation, making the timing "phenomenal," Piguet added.

The question of who is responsible for removing abandoned space hardware remains a legal grey area.

The ESA has emphasized it is not a regulator and can only enforce debris mitigation for its own missions.

"Space debris is a classic 'tragedy of the commons' dilemma and therefore should be tackled by global cooperation," the agency says on its website.

Flohrer said that compliance with space debris standards is slowly improving, particularly among commercial operators, but not fast enough to stop the amount of junk in orbit from growing.

Faiola suggested that regulation by itself can help create the market for space debris removal. 

"Nobody debates that we need to decommission nuclear power plants at the end of their lives," he said. "The companies that do that do that because regulations are in place that say they need to do that."

"We need the regulations to catch up, and then this is all going to make sense."