Space cleaner gets an easier target

The European Space Agency has made significant changes to the ClearSpace-1 mission. It has a new target. In 2020, ESA signed a contract worth 86 million euros with the Swiss startup ClearSpace SA. It has committed to carrying out the first ever mission to actively de-orbit a fragment of space debris. In the future, this technology could be used to combat other objects that pose a danger to existing spacecraft. ClearSpace’s choice fell on the VESPA, a payload adapter mounted …