All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
ClearSpace spun out of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) university in 2017 after working since 2012 on an academic mission to deorbit SwissCube.
Under ESA’s Clean Space initiative, the agency will develop guidance, navigation and control technologies plus rendezvous and debris-capture methods to be applied to the ClearSpace-1 mission.
ESA funding for ClearSpace-1 requires the mission to launch on a European rocket.
ClearSpace-1 is slated to launch in 2025 to capture and deorbit a 100-kilogram Vespa payload adapter left in orbit by an Arianespace Vega after deploying ESA’s Proba-V satellite.
ClearSpace aims to launch its debris-removal spacecraft in late 2024 or early 2025.
Both Astroscale and ClearSpace won contracts to participate in the Sunrise Project, a public-private partnership led by OneWeb and the European Space Agency to explore advanced technologies including active debris removal.
ClearSpace was selected by the European Space Agency from about a dozen competitors to retrieve an ESA rocket component as part of the ClearSpace-1 mission.
ClearSpace’s ClearSpace-1 mission is scheduled to launch in 2025 and involves capturing VESPA, a Vega rocket secondary payload adapter, and disposing of it in Earth’s atmosphere.
ClearSpace was established in December 2017 as a spinoff of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
ClearSpace received a 1.4 million Swiss franc grant from InnoSwiss, the Swiss innovation agency.
ClearSpace receives research and technical support from the EPFL Space Center and is part of the ESA Business Incubation Center in Switzerland.