WASHINGTON — A Rocket Lab Electron launched an Astroscale spacecraft that will rendezvous with and inspect a spent upper stage in low Earth orbit as a precursor to removing it.
The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 9:52 a.m. Eastern Feb. 18. The launch was the second this year for the company after the Jan. 31 launch of four satellites for space situational awareness company NorthStar Earth and Space.
The sole payload for this launch was the Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J) spacecraft. The 150-kilogram satellite was released into an orbit of about 600 kilometers 64 minutes after liftoff.
ADRAS-J was developed by Astroscale as the first phase of the Japanese space Agency JAXA’s Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration, or CRD2, program. The goal of ADRAS-J is to approach the upper stage of an H-2A rocket, 11 meters long and 4 meters in diameter, that launched the GOSAT Earth observation satellite in 2009 and inspect it. A future second phase of the CRD2 program will send a spacecraft to the upper stage to attempt to deorbit it.
“This will be, to my knowledge, the first mission that will approach and rendezvous with an actual piece of space debris,” said Mike Lindsay, chief technology officer of Astroscale, during a panel discussion at the Space Debris Conference organized by the Saudi Space Agency Feb. 12. “What we’re going to do is assess the state of this space debris, see how it’s moving, how it’s tumbling, what is its condition, really trying to determine if it’s safe to approach with a follow-on mission.”
Astroscale officials said in a September briefing that the mission had several milestones to demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), including the ability to safely approach and operate around the upper stage while collecting information about it to aid a future mission to grapple and deorbit it.
“The key to the mission is…
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