TOKYO — The Astroscale spacecraft continues to inspect Japan’s upper stage left in low Earth orbit while showing it can do so safely.
Astroscale announced on July 9 that its Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J) probe performed a “go-around” maneuver, partially bypassing the H-2A upper stage that it had been inspecting for the past few months. ADRAS-J used sensors to maintain a distance of only 50 meters from the stage.
However, about one-third of the way through the maneuver, ADRAS-J encountered what the company called an “unexpected attitude anomaly” that triggered an automatic abort. The spacecraft moved away from the stage to avoid any risk of collision.
“The abort maneuver performed during the flyby operation demonstrated that ADRAS-J can maintain safety even when observing uncooperative objects at close range,” the company said in a statement, adding that engineers had found the cause of the anomaly and were preparing for another close approach to the stage.
Other than that anomaly, Astroscale says the ADRAS-J mission went well. The spacecraft launched in February and approached the H-2A stage in April. In May, he came within 50 meters of the stage and since then has been carrying out inspections leading up to the go-around maneuver that began on 19 June.
Here, Nobu Okada, founder and CEO of Astroscale, shows some images of the stage taken by ADRAS-J during a July 8 presentation at the Spacetide conference. “It was just beautiful,” he said.
The images showed that the stage remained relatively intact after 15 years in orbit. “These images have many implications” for future debris removal efforts, he said. Among them is a very low rate of fall, which he called “almost static”.
Besides being a technical demonstration of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), Okada said ADRAS-J is a political demonstration in accordance with the Japanese government’s in-orbit service guidelines for safety and transparency. This included obtaining the appropriate permits, emphasizing safe operations, and sharing information about spacecraft operations.
ADRAS-J is the first phase of the Japanese space agency JAXA’s Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration program. In April, JAXA selected Astroscale for the second phase of the program, when the company will send a spacecraft to the same upper stage to deorbit it. Astroscale has not released detailed plans for this mission.
While Astroscale operated ADRAS-J, the company also conducted an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Growth Market, a section of the exchange for companies with higher growth potential but also higher risk. Astroscale soared on its first day of trading on June 5, closing up more than 60%. The company has since given back those gains and closed at 818 yen ($5.07) per share on July 9, below its IPO price of 850 yen.
“This shows that the global investment community sees the importance of space sustainability, but also the market opportunity for in-orbit servicing,” he said in the event of the IPO.
Okada highlighted the company’s growth, noting that its backlog has grown from ¥1.7 billion two years ago to ¥28.5 billion today. “Using RPO technologies, we are finally seizing the opportunity,” he said. “We are on the cusp of a booming market for in-orbit services.”