Authors: Elena Vrabie and Bogdan Iordache

Space debris isn’t like climate change. The effect is not felt gradually. A single collision event can have a significant impact on our everyday lives. Space objects can collide at speeds greater than 8 km/s, which creates thousands of fragments too small to track. These fragments can go on to collide with other spacecraft in a cascade effect that would render entire orbits unusable. Responsible spacecraft operators spend a lot of time and fuel avoiding debris and disposing of their own spacecraft once they have finished their mission. This is Plan A. But if a satellite fails or gets disabled and can’t dispose of itself, there’s no backup plan. Alex Godfrey from Astroscale has spent his career preparing for the moment everyone wishes we’d acted sooner. His message: we need Plan B now!

Alex Godfrey is Head of Defence at Astroscale UK, where he leads the company’s expansion into national security and space control services. Based in Harwell, he brings over a decade of corporate experience in engineering and business operations, with a background in space systems, aerospace, and astronautics.

Astroscale is a global leader in in-orbit servicing, dedicated to the secure and sustainable development of space. Founded in 2013 by Nobu Okada in Tokyo, the 700+ employee company has raised over €500M in funding to develop life-extension, active debris removal, and in-situ space situational awareness solutions, leveraging rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) technologies. 

In the interview, Alex Godfrey proposes that satellite refueling will redefine the orbital arms race and drive the development of collaborative servicing infrastructure across allied space systems. He highlights the need for “Plan B” capabilities such as rendezvous, repair, and refueling to prevent debris crises, extend satellite life, and enable space control. 

Underline Ventures: Many underestimate the importance of space. Why is proactive debris removal critical for space safety?

Alex Godfrey: We rely so much on space for our daily lives, whether that’s using the phone to navigate somewhere or doing a financial transaction; satellite services inform all. The loss of GPS or GNSS in the UK is estimated to cost the government £1 billion a day. 

We can’t wait for a big collision to realize that it’s not something that will gradually get worse to take action. It’s not like climate change, which is gradual, and I would argue we are not addressing that quickly enough either. A space debris crisis will happen suddenly, and we will be looking back, wishing that we had done something sooner. 

Satellites travelling at seven or eight kilometers a second, on impact, could form thousands of fragments that are uncontrollable, undetectable, and can obliterate everything in an orbit. Before a collision happens, it is more manageable to remove a large failed spacecraft from orbit, a big piece of debris that you can track and grab hold of. 

UV: Given the escalating risks associated with space debris, such as the near-collisions between satellites and debris fragments, the potential for Kessler Syndrome*, and the increasing number of debris-generating events, how should national security strategies evolve to address these threats?

AG: The strategy that you take depends on which orbit you are in. In low Earth orbit (LEO), we have the rise of the mega constellations, Eutelsat OneWeb, for example, which have been leaning forward on space sustainability. We have to make sure that those spacecraft going up are taking into account serviceability, that all spacecraft are fitted with docking plates to be serviced. 

From a government perspective, there has to be a push on the regulatory side to make sure that operators not only have a plan A, because everyone is required to plan their own deorbiting strategy. They should also be required to have a plan B if they lose control of their spacecraft. 

When you start to look at your wider national security pieces, it’s then that you understand the operational environment. How do you use the same technologies that you need to rendezvous with a spacecraft to perform a refueling mission or a debris removal service? How do you use that to help exercise space control and ensure that you can respond to aggressive action in orbit?

(Ed. Note: Kessler Syndrome – recurring collisions leading to unusable orbits)

UV: Could you walk us through what Plan A and Plan B actually look like in practice? For instance, what does a spacecraft operator’s Plan A entail for end-of-life disposal?

AG: Plan A for a spacecraft that’s in LEO is to come out of that orbit within 25 years. There is a lot of work being done at the moment through agencies to push it down to five years. 

What you typically do in LEO is lower your orbit until you start entering the atmosphere, and your spacecraft burns up. If it’s a large spacecraft, you have to do that in a controlled way, because there is potential for your big metallic objects within that spacecraft, like fuel tanks, to make it to the ground. So, you also have to plan your re-entry in case anything does come down, to ensure it happens in the middle of the ocean, and not cause any harm. 

In higher orbits, bringing your spacecraft all the way back down to the Earth’s atmosphere is not practical. You would have to carry tons of fuel to do that, so in geostationary orbit, the strategy is to move up into a graveyard orbit. The geostationary (GEO) orbit is a protected belt where our big communication satellites sit. Here, you have to move outwards to a higher orbit, so you are not going to interfere with anything in that protected GEO belt region for at least 100 years. 

UV: And when Plan A fails, what does Plan B involve from a technical standpoint?

AG: Depending on your orbit and whether your spacecraft is pre-prepared, you take different strategies for Plan B. Like anything, and particularly in space, if something’s expected to survive for 20 years without being able to be serviced at all, there is a chance that some will just break. 

One example is called Envisat (by the European Space Agency – ESA). This is a multi-ton spacecraft; it’s not controlled, it’s got a long time before it re-enters, and the probability that it will hit something before it does is between 15% and 30%. That is a big problem and something that ESA has already done a lot of work around to understand what debris removal technology would be needed to address it. It’s an old legacy item that was never designed to be refurbished, so you have to find a hard point of the spacecraft to latch onto. 

For plan B, thankfully, most spacecraft have what’s called a ”launch adapter ring”, a sturdy circular metal ring where you connect to the launch vehicle, and there are lots of ways of grabbing on to it to bring it down or take it to higher orbits. 

UV: Astroscale works with various capture mechanisms, like magnetic and robotic arms. What drives the choice between these methods, and what are the complexity trade-offs of each approach?

AG: Something that has some form of docking plate (magnetic or mechanical) on it is prepared for servicing, whereas an unprepared spacecraft might need a robotic arm to grab onto a hard point. The difference is cost and complexity. Whether a piece of debris requires magnetic or robotic operations, it’s considered a non-cooperative rendezvous. The target satellite is not providing us with any data. It is not moving favorably to try and be grabbed. 

A cooperative capture might be something like docking onto the International Space Station (ISS), where you know a lot about the object that is moving, as the target can provide you with an active data feed, and it may also position itself to receive you. If you are trying to dock with a satellite that has a docking plate on it (acting as a tow hook point), this is easy to grab. For a spacecraft prepared for servicing, there has also been thought put into the satellite’s design to make sure that there aren’t components, like deployable antennas, in the way, which, from Astroscale’s perspective, makes the docking maneuver simpler, and the cost can be kept lower. 

However, the most difficult part of rendezvousing is the flight dynamics and guidance, along with the control algorithms, to be able to get close to another spacecraft. Astroscale was working on the ADRAS-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) mission recently, and when you are 10-15 meters away, going at those speeds, it can potentially be catastrophic to get it wrong. That whole activity of what we call rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) is the key that makes all this work, and we have shown how to do that on a non-cooperative asset or a piece of debris. 

UV: What are the military applications of RPO technology, and why is space control becoming so important?

AG: My focus at the moment is on how we make space not only safe and sustainable, but also secure. Recently, there was an article with the head of the Space Command, Major General Paul Tedman, talking about space control, and that they are getting weekly interference problems from Russia. 

Large defence investments, like aircraft carriers, are very well protected and supported.  You don’t take a multi-billion euro carrier asset to the sea alone. They typically launch with a carrier strike group around them – destroyers, submarines, logistics services like refueling boats. If we take a similar value asset in space, such as a Military SATCOM system, these are typically launched on their own. Despite being the same value as an aircraft carrier, there is no similar protection around it, and as we’re seeing more capabilities being developed by adversaries, it’s going to be more critical for countries to invest in space control. 

We saw that Germany recently announced 35B euros to be put towards defensive space. The UK announced it’s also a priority. The US is developing a lot of capability as well. France is actively seeking solutions. It’s a big area, and from a VC investor perspective, it all relies on that RPO capability. Whilst RPO is critical to space sustainability and the in-orbit servicing piece, it is also essential for space control, because if you can’t maneuver, you can’t have that agile action in that space control context, then you’re not able to compete.

UV: Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission achieved the closest-ever commercial approach to space debris at just 15 meters. What was the primary purpose of achieving such proximity, and how did the mission validate the capabilities that will be used for your first end-of-life mission, ELSA-M?

AG: It all comes down to the development of RPO capabilities. We have a full suite of flight dynamics tools that inform maneuver planning and how we get close. We were testing them out to get close to a non-cooperative target, which included taking into account factors that are hard to fully understand from the ground alone. 

When we approach an object, we have to do it safely. If we are going to dock with a spacecraft in orbit or a piece of debris, we have to understand its state in orbit: has there been anything that’s broken or fragmented, is there a loose cable or a panel that is going to get in the way? We also want to understand how the object is moving: is it rotating or tumbling? 

You can ascertain a lot of information about a target from the ground, especially in lower orbit, where it’s closer, but there is still a level of uncertainty. ADRAS-J therefore served as a reconnaissance exercise to understand the object before we intended to go after it. The follow-on mission, ADRAS-J2, will attempt to safely approach the same object through RPO, obtain further images, then remove and deorbit the debris body using in-house robotic arm technologies. 

UV: Life extension (Lexi-P) and refueling missions (APS-R) point to a service economy in orbit. From a defence perspective, how critical are these capabilities for resilience and deterrence in GEO and LEO?

AG: That sort of servicing infrastructure is game-changing. Take any market on Earth, and there is always some form of after-sales, marketing, and support that keeps things going. 

Apart from the US, other Western allies looking at space control are never going to be able to match the cadence with which some adversary countries launch spacecraft. You therefore have to make sure that your spacecraft is efficient and cost-effective to keep you competitive against the mass launching of multiple systems. 

Space control is much about agility and the ability to perform big maneuvers. A phrase in defence circles is ”we want to maneuver without regret.” If you are a smart adversary system, you will continually try to get your opponent to move, use fuel, and run out of it, so it’s game over. If we have refueling services, that changes the dynamics in orbit. 

We also have to think smarter about upgradeable and repairable spacecraft as well, because once you can rendezvous and dock with another spacecraft, there are lots of things you can do with it. You can repair a sensor that may have been dazzled by an opponent’s laser weapon, you can upgrade your spacecraft to combat a new threat, a new type of space control effect that you didn’t think was even possible five years earlier, when you launched that system. 

UV: Astroscale recently won the UK MoD’s Orpheus mission for space situational awareness. As a company originally focused on civil space debris removal, what do your growing defence products (including APS-R refueling and Orpheus) reveal about Astroscale’s strategic evolution, and what barriers have you had to overcome to gain credibility in the defence sector?

AG: The development of space control services and space domain awareness capabilities is a natural progression of Astroscale’s vision. We aspire to a safe and sustainable space, and we are just clarifying it by adding secure as well. 

We have had operations on the civil side, and we are progressing more into live operations on the defence side, supporting customers with refueling missions like APS-R for the US Space Forces; in the UK, we will be doing ionospheric characterization with Orpheus, and there will also be missions in Japan looking at responsive space systems. All of this embeds us more in that world of defence, and allows us to start to develop systems and transparent technology that will help space control. 

It’s always difficult with defence products to break into the market, because you have to be trusted. You have to show that not only are you technically credible, but you can also manage secure information. It’s a big learning curve for a lot of companies, and at Astroscale, we have a very experienced set of people who have come from other industries, and we are giving confidence to MoDs around the world. We are no longer a startup and are poised to support the Defence sector. 

UV: For commercial space companies looking to enter the defence market, what are the practical challenges of navigating government procurement systems, and what strategic approach would you recommend for startups trying to build credibility with Ministry of Defence (MoD) customers?

AG: It is difficult to break through into that world. Before you even win a contract, it is important to understand what is out there, as there are a lot of frameworks and ways of contracting MoDs. In the UK, for example, if we think of space defence frameworks, there are almost 40 that we could track. Each of them requires different efforts; sometimes you have to develop accreditation that might take three or four months. 

If you are a startup, you won’t have the bandwidth to apply to 40 frameworks. A smaller company would better establish a partnership with a Prime to help navigate all that. And to do so, it is easier if you develop a subsystem. If you are a propulsion provider, you could provide the defence market without ever having a direct contract with the MoD.

Don’t think that you’re going to be awarded a military SATCOM program on day one. You are going to have to earn your credibility. It’s a long game. Be realistic and go for things that make sense. 

UV: As space activity continues to scale with larger satellite constellations and more frequent launches in 2026, how do you see this growth affecting defence space operations in the following 3-5 years?

AG: With the mega constellations on the rise, it makes space more congested. What we are seeing is insurance companies pulling out of space, which makes everything pricier. This is going to stimulate the market massively for servicing, not just debris removal, but also making things that are in orbit last longer through life extension or refueling.

From a defence perspective, we still have to operate in a safe environment. We are conscious of the risks of what’s going on in space. That might mean that platforms need to become more resilient until the environment is controlled. 

Either you put pressure on people to control the environment, or you accept that the environment is getting riskier and you plan your system accordingly. That might mean you need redundant spacecraft so you don’t lose your service, or carry more fuel because you have to do more collision avoidance maneuvers. 

UV: Do you see Europe developing its own sovereign “service layer” in orbit?

AG: There has to be a sensible conversation about how you distribute servicing architecture at an alliance level. NATO is a way to push that forward, or through other alliances as well. Otherwise, it is going to be costly and inefficient for many nations to do it. Imagine it like needing to have a different fuel station for every brand of car. 

Often, a country will distribute its assets across the GEO orbit. For example, the UK military has SATCOM systems spread around the GEO belt at slightly different inclinations. Although it might not look too different to the naked eye, even changing your orbit’s inclination by one degree can mean about a year’s worth of fuel.

Take the UK’s Skynet system – the biggest difference between assets is about four degrees. If you were going to try and develop a system that could service all of them, it would lose about four years of its fuel every time it went from one to the other. Whereas in those similar orbits, you have several allied assets. So it makes sense to group services by where they sit in orbit, not nationally. 

UV: How do you see international collaboration and regulation evolving in the space servicing sector, and what challenges do we need to address before it’s too late?

AG: Everything that has been serviced, or every planned mission, has addressed clients from the same nation as the servicer (e.g., a UK asset servicing another UK asset). What will be really interesting is when we start asking: how does this work between different nations, for example, when a UK asset legally interacts with a French asset? If something goes wrong, who’s liable and what happens? It’s difficult, but it’s a critical problem that needs to be solved to address the challenge of space debris.

UV: There’s still legal and regulatory uncertainty around active debris removal: who owns the debris, who pays, who authorizes the mission? How is Astroscale helping governments and agencies navigate these policy hurdles?

AG: There is a good regulatory environment that controls debris and stimulates the market. We work in groups within the UN and have also been supporting the UK’s RPO regulatory sandbox most recently. 

We have been working in a consortium with industry partners and the UK government to shape the guidelines; the market is big enough. In terms of the messages, it is making sure that spacecraft are prepared and also encouraging people to remove things from orbit sooner.

[Ed. Note: The RPO Operators Consortium discussed how UK laws and regulations would apply to different scenarios, uncovering difficulties in applying them to real-world RPO complexities. Among their achievements have been a sandbox blueprint which can be replicated in the future, as well as more detailed licensing scenarios – phase I report. Astroscale has also been involved in the Zero Debris Charter Technical Booklet, facilitated by ESA.]