Abstract
In 1978, NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler demonstrated the danger represented by the decaying of man-made space objects in orbit around Earth. Indeed, if these space debris had been for a long time considered as an acceptable risk considering the low probability of collision, the ever expending activity of man in space skyrocketed the number of debris so much that the ―Big Sky‖ theory is no longer valid. The 2009 the Cosmos-Iridium collision proved that the Kessler syndrome was not just an unlikely scenario. Scientists now fear that a new collision could cause a cascade of other collisions, denying mankind access to space.
Though mitigation policies are being put in place, it appears that the only sustainable solution would be to actively clean the near-Earth orbits. If for the last decade political, economic and legal obstacles have been slowing down the implementation of space debris removal, it appears that new initiatives in the fields of law, politics, industry and economical thinking are putting space cleaning under a new light. The development of such responsible activity seems to be possible as self-made ideas and geopolitical trends are evolving. It is the reason why through a thorough analysis of the literature available, we decided to demonstrate that not only the implementation of a space cleaning initiative was possible, but that it could very well become a profitable activity.
We first asked ourselves if a market existed beyond the need for ODR previously demonstrated. If today space pundits do not all agree on the exact answer, the school of thoughts underlines that LEO and GEO orbits are promising markets for space cleaning activities, LEO orbits appearing more as a public market and GEO orbits as a private market. Furthermore, in the course of our researches, we discovered that customers could potentially be interested by such projects. States could very well be willing to prevent their space assets from being destroyed by multiple collisions. For reasons linked to profitability, private companies such as satellite operators may want to use ODR technologies to remove objects from useful orbits or refuel their own satellites with propellant. Thus, we understand that more than just removing dead satellites, the development of space cleaning technologies can give birth to other services, such as space tugging, on orbit refueling and so on, that is to say that a new part of the space industry could emerge: On-orbit Satellite Servicing.
Eventually, we gathered and summed-up the various ways the literature sees to organize and implement orbital debris removal and associated technologies. Such industry would lie somewhere between a public good and a private sector service, between an international organization and a global market with enterprises competing against each other. If initial funding should come from public funds, in the end the space cleaning industry may very well create its own profitability.
