Cosmoserve’s active debris removal tech to take flight with Skyroot’s Vikram
Cosmoserve Space, a startup developing active debris removal (ADR) technologies, said its first orbital technology demonstration will piggyback aboard Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1, whose approved launch
Cosmoserve Space, a startup developing active debris removal (ADR) technologies, said its first orbital technology demonstration will piggyback aboard Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1, whose approved launch window is between July 12 and August 4. Mission Embrace, the name given to the project, will attempt the world’s first demonstration of soft robotic capture in orbit. With it, the company will take its first step towards building critical orbital infrastructure that will help create a safer, more sustainable and commercially viable space ecosystem, Cosmoserve said.
“We developed this technology from concept to flight-ready hardware in four months within a company that is less than a year old, without compromising engineering rigour,” Cosmoserve Space founder and CEO Chiranjeevi Phanindra. The mission is an important milestone in advancing technologies that will enable orbital sustainability and space debris removal while demonstrating how rapidly India’s private space ecosystem can innovate through collaboration, he said in a release on Monday.
As satellite constellations continue to expand and orbital congestion increases, technologies that enable capture and removal of defunct spacecraft will become essential to future of space operations. The company is focussed on building scalable technologies for ADR and in-orbit servicing, Cosmoserve said. At the core of its offering is a dual-spacecraft system, in which a robotic servicer spacecraft is capable of capturing and removing defunct satellites at roughly one-tenth the cost of any comparable solution available today.
The soft robotic capture mechanism is technology purpose-built to gently latch onto unprepared and non-cooperative objects in orbit — precisely the conditions found around dead satellites. Mission Embrace will validate the capture technology in space for the first time.
The BriefWire