UK space agency unveils £1m space junk projects

Estimates of the amount of space debris in orbit vary, from around 900,000 pieces of space junk larger than 1cm to over 160 million orbital objects in total.

These objects are thought to pose an increasingly a significant threat to the satellite systems which provide many of our vital services.

Cosmic cleanup - addressing the space debris problem

And with only a fraction of this debris trackable with existing technology an improved ability to monitor potentially hazardous space junk is viewed as critical to the continued development and deployment of satellites

One of the projects to benefit from the latest investment is led by UK space start-up Lift Me Off, which is focussed on the development of machine learning algorithms to distinguish between satellites and space debris. The technology will be able to distinguish between satellites operating nominally and anomalously together with understanding the composition of space debris on-orbit. A prototype test bed with representative sensors, electronics and algorithms will be built to experimentally develop the concept and techniques which can be later scaled up to an end-to-end autonomous algorithm for detection of anomalous behaviour that can, similarly to air traffic control, raise warnings based on live information.