Astroscale UK Secures Contract for Final Phase of ELSA-M In-Orbit Demonstration

Managing Director of Astroscale UK Nick Shave with the Eutelsat OneWeb and ESA team

Astroscale Ltd (“Astroscale UK”), the UK subsidiary of Astroscale Holdings Inc. (“Astroscale”), the market leader in satellite servicing and long-term orbital sustainability, has secured EUR 13.95 million (approximately USD 15 million or GBP 11.78 million) from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency (“ESA”) to support the final phase of the End-of-Life by Astroscale-Multiple (ELSA-M) in-orbit demonstration.

The funding was released following the securing of the contract with Eutelsat OneWeb in the context of the Sunrise Partnership Project, a public-private partnership between ESA and the Eutelsat Group.

The Sunrise Partnership Project, part of ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) programme, aims to develop solutions for future generation telecommunication satellite missions. Both the ARTES programme and Sunrise are supported by the UK Space Agency.

Set to launch during the fiscal year ending in April 2026, ELSA-M will be the world’s first commercial end-of-life service for prepared satellites, meaning satellites designed with technologies such as an interface that will enable docking and removal. This groundbreaking mission, designed and built by Astroscale UK at the Harwell Campus in Oxford, improves on the capabilities developed and successfully demonstrated by ELSA-d. The ELSA-d mission, launched in 2021, validated Astroscale’s end-of-life technologies, completing unprecedented demonstrations in-orbit, including repeated magnetic capture and controlled close-approach rendezvous operations between the two spacecraft in orbit.

ELSA-M Phase 4 includes flight model assembly, integration and testing, launch and commissioning, through in-orbit demonstration activities, and full in-house operations of successfully docking, de-orbiting, and releasing of the Eutelsat OneWeb client spacecraft.

With this achievement, Astroscale UK continues to demonstrate its commitment to sustainable space operations and pave the way for the future of space sustainability and satellite servicing.