Since 2016, ESA’s Clean Space Industry Days have become the central forum for European industry working on designing and building sustainable missions. Now more than ever, ESA is committed to supporting activities across the European space sector that will help make a cleaner space, both on Earth and up above.

We are delighted to announce the next edition of the Clean Space Industry Days at ESTEC (Noordwijk, NL) from 10th to 14th October 2022.

From Monday to Friday, participants will join sessions covering topics ranging from evaluating the environmental impact of a space mission to designing spacecraft compliant with space debris mitigation requirements.

With its global leadership in the field of eco-design for space missions and tackling space debris, ESA’s objective is to boost the European space actors’ competitiveness in these crucial domains.

This year’s edition of CSID edition will cover:

1. Ecodesign for Space: providing a framework for embedding environmental sustainability within space mission design, to define goals to achieve the objective of a Green Space through the development and usage of green technologies.

2. End-of-Life Management: developing technologies to prevent the creation of future debris and implementing system activities to promote their integration in future missions, striving to achieve solutions for a Zero debris objective for ESA missions by 2030.

3. In-Orbit Servicing: enabling commercial missions aiming at servicing other satellites, through active debris removal, repairing, refuelling or even recycling, as the cornerstone for a vital new European business.

More information about each branch and its focus is available below the Registration and Call for abstracts sections.

Registration

The event is open to entities from ESA Member States, Cooperating States and Associate States as well as to companies from outside this perimeter if they intend to act as “buyer” to procure European products and services. 

Participation is free of charge. However, a registration is required. Therefore, we invite you to register online on the event webpage: https://indico.esa.int/e/CSID2022

If you have any question, feel free to email us: cleanspace@esa.int.

Call for abstracts

Through the event webpage, it is possible to submit an abstract for the Clean Space Industry Days 2022. If an abstract is selected, the authors will be asked to prepare a presentation that will be scheduled during the CSID22.

The abstract shall be submitted online as pdf attachment, following the template provided at the bottom of the event main page: https://indico.esa.int/e/CSID2022

The timeline is the following:
15 July 2022: Submission deadline
10 September 2022: Abstract selection announcement
10-14 October 2022: Presentation of the selected abstracts during the CSID22

Ecodesign for space

ESA has been a pioneer in the field of Ecodesign, being actively working on understanding and finding ways to decrease the environmental footprint of space missions, from their design to their disposal, for the past decade. This process started with the adaptation and application of the environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to space activities and progressed with the development and publication of the Space System Life Cycle Assessment Guidelines and of the ESA LCA Database. The LCA allows the identification of environmental hotspots and the development of innovative solutions to decrease the environmental impact. Applying “EcoDesign” to space missions means to design them considering their environmental impact and fostering the use of green materials and manufacturing processes, while engaging proactively with European environmental legislations, such as REACH.

The way forward is to further consolidate the existing framework, improving and extending the LCA Database and updating the guidelines. The objective is to apply the LCA and Ecodesign approach to more projects and missions from the beginning of the mission definition, so that the environmental impacts can be considered in the decision-making process. One of the aims of the 2022 CSID will be to define what “green” means in the space sector and to pave the way towards a Green Space. As ESA operates in a region where tackling environmental issues is considered a priority, it is not a surprise that both environmental LCA and Ecodesign for space missions are of high interest to European space actors.

Read more about the Ecodesign activities conducted by Clean Space here. Watch the “Ecodesign at ESA” webinar here.

End-of-Life Management

A key aspect of space sustainability is a proper Management of the End-of-Life of a spacecraft, in order to minimize space debris production. The tremendous traffic increase in Earth orbit calls for a fast evolution of the Space Debris Mitigation requirements and their global implementation.  A “Zero Debris” objective has been defined by the DG as the aim to consistently and reliably remove ESA missions from valuable orbits around Earth immediately after they cease operations and apply a net zero pollution strategy for objects in space by 2030. With this ambitious objective ESA wants to lead by example, and European large system integrators are setting the Management of End-of-Life as a main driver for the evolution of their platforms.

Through the CleanSat initiative launched in 2015, ESA has set up a proactive and coordinated approach with system integrators and suppliers to harmonize the requirements and to mature End-of-Life technologies in the fields of Deorbit systems, Design for Demise and Passivation. On top of this, through a pro-active approach, EOP has also pioneered in the last years the implementation of Design for Removal requirements in all Copernicus Expansion missions. Now, as several of these technologies have matured and are close to qualification, the need lies in concrete system work at subsystem and platform level to integrate those building blocks in a clear and coherent way. ESA is promoting the development of new Zero Debris platforms that can be widely used in future missions, in line with ESA’s Zero Debris objective.

These future platforms should integrate the heritage technologies from CleanSat activities but also go beyond the current State-of-the-Art, and include features such as:

  • full platform design for demise,
  • modular implementation of controlled re-entry,
  • system resilience improvement,
  • deorbiting systems,
  • passivation of residual sources of energy,
  • preparation for removal in case of failure in orbit.

This coordinated systems level work is foreseeing the involvement of both integrators and suppliers and promoting the swift development and integration of innovative technology.

Read more about the CleanSat story here and the CleanSat activities here. Watch the CleanSat and the Zero Debris (available in July) webinars here.

In-Orbit Servicing

In 2019, ESA challenged the European space industry to come up with a service to remove one or more ESA object(s). By acting as pioneers in the first debris-removal service, European industry will gain a first-mover advantage on the global stage and kick-start a new market for on-orbit servicing.

In 2021, ESA published an ITT to commercialise In-Orbit Servicing, with the aim to bring together a service provider and a customer for the servicing of a spacecraft. The service could have been one or more of the following: AOCS take-over, assembly, refurbishment, manufacturing or refuelling. Now, four primes have been selected and are maturating their mission concept. ESA will present a proposal to place contract(s) with Service Provider(s) and Customer(s) for performing In-Orbit Servicing covering some or all categories defined above at the ESA Council meeting at Ministerial level, foreseen to be held in Q4 2022.

Such missions are technically demanding, and therefore ESA has been carrying out several studies to develop and mature the necessary technologies both for debris removal and in-orbit servicing. The Clean Space Industrial Days will be an opportunity to gain up-to-date information such as:

  •     Technology Developments for rendezvous (sensors and controllers)
  •     Technology Developments for capture (strategies and technologies)
  •     IOD Missions (e.g. IOD’s to demonstrate rendezvous or inspection)

For decades we assumed that in-orbit assembly, manufacturing and recycling was a future, science fiction concept. In-orbit servicing is already reality, and it is becoming clear that On-orbit manufacturing, assembly and recycle (OMAR) will also become part of the portfolio of future Earth-orbit services.

One critical element for enabling IOS is to provide a framework for sustainable operations through guidelines. ESA has been coordinating a European WG deriving a set of technical guidelines and an associated handbook to support the verification of guidelines. During the Industry Days, ESA can provide an update of these.

Therefore, time will be allocated to the various In-Orbit Servicing topics above such as:

  • Mission implementation
  • In-Orbit Demonstration Missions (IODs)
  • Technology Development
  • Mission Preparation
  • Guidelines for Sustainable Close Proximity Operations

Read more about IOS at ESA here. Watch the webinar “European Technical Recommendations for safe and sustainable close proximity operations in-orbit” here.