American Portal Space Systems and Australian Paladin Space have announced a partnership to create a commercial system for cleaning up low Earth orbit from space debris. The companies plan to begin regular missions as early as 2027. The project is being developed in the form of Debris Removal as a Service.
The system will be built around the Starburst spacecraft developed by Portal. It will be able to maneuver in orbit and refuel in space. A Triton module from Paladin Space, designed to detect, classify, and capture small objects up to one meter in size, including spinning fragments, will be installed on board.
An estimated nearly 130 million fragments of space debris are orbiting Earth. Even tiny particles pose a threat to satellites because of their enormous speed. The new project is focused specifically on removing small objects, which most often force satellites to carry out avoidance maneuvers.
The companies aim to make orbital cleanup routine and economically accessible. The system is expected to remove dozens of objects per launch. The first Starburst-1 spacecraft is planned to be launched into orbit at the end of 2026 as part of SpaceX Transporter-18.
Earlier projects of this kind mostly looked like technological experiments. Individual missions have already demonstrated the ability to catch a satellite with a net, a harpoon, or a robotic arm. But they almost always involved single objects and very expensive operations. The new project focuses on scale and regularity. It is, in a sense, a "municipal service for space."
