The UK Space Agency has opened a public competition to name its Active Debris Removal Mission, a spacecraft being built by ClearSpace UK. The mission is scheduled to begin operations in 2029 and will remove two satellites registered in the UK from low Earth orbit, with the UK government contributing more than £60 million and disposal expected by 2032.
The spacecraft will approach each satellite, capture it, and lower it into an orbit where it will burn up in the atmosphere. It will then climb back to a higher orbit for another job, and because it is refuellable, the government says it can continue sweeping space for years. Launch is planned from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland. ClearSpace UK's managing director, Rob Atchison, said the next step is to "design, build and test a spacecraft that can get close, safely, to an object never designed to be caught, and take control of it."
The naming contest has strict rules: the name must be two words, with a 150-word explanation, and no swearing, offensive or political terms, or anything that could attract intellectual property lawyers. The agency's announcement did not reference the Boaty McBoatface poll, in which the public's favourite name for a research ship was overruled. The mission is part of a broader push to deal with orbital debris; the European Space Agency announced its own ClearSpace-1 mission in 2019, and a recent attempt by Katalyst Space to rescue NASA's Swift observatory failed.