Astroscale is “the first private company with a mission to secure long-term spaceflight safety by developing space debris removal services.”
Launching its corporate headquarters in Singapore in 2013, R&D office in Japan in 2015 and branch office in the United Kingdom in 2017, it is now ready to launch “the world’s first in-situ space debris monitoring microsatellite in low-Earth orbit.”
IDEA OSG 1, as it is called, will be launched on November 28 at 14:41:46 (JST) from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome with the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos meteorology mission Meteor-M №2-1.
The microsatellite was shipped from Japan at the end of September. IDEA OSG 1 now awaits checkout before rocket integration at the launch site.
The microsatellite – just two and a half years in the making – will be placed in an elliptical low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 600 – 800km, and will monitor the size and position of space debris to create debris distribution maps to better understand the space environment.
Information on the IDEA OSG 1 provided by Astroscale:
| Size | 400mm×400mm×600mm |
| Mass | 25kg |
| Insertion Orbit | Apogee Altitude (about 800km) |
| Perigee Altitude (about 600km) | |
| Polar Orbital Plane | |
| Launch Vehicle | Soyuz-2/Fregat |
| (provided by JSC Glavkosmos) | |
| Mission Modules | Space Debris Monitor |
| 350mm×350mm×2sheets | |
| Attitude Control & | Sun Sensor, Magnetomenter, MEMS Gryo, |
| Determination System | 3 axis-control Magnetorquer |
