Japan’s Astroscale’s UK subsidiary has received around $15 million (€17.8m) from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency to de-orbit a dead OneWeb satellite.

The funding goes into ELSA-M, or End of Life Services mission, and is scheduled for 2026. The new cash comes on top of an €18 million grant which covered the first three phases.

The mission’s Phase Four schedule handles the assembly, integration and testing of an ELSA-M satellite which nis built with a capture mechanism comprising a magnetic docking plate already in place on most of the Eutelsat-owned OneWeb fleet.

OneWeb has more than 600 satellites in low Earth orbit. Astroscale’s UK MD Nick Shave said ELSA-M confirmed that it would remove a OneWeb satellite already in orbit that is no longer in service.

The ELSA-M scheme is potentially capable of handling more than one target satellite, and is designed to cope with satellites up to 800 kgs in size, which ELSA-M would then deorbit.

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Tags: japan, satellite, Space, UK