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RobotRisk / Astroscale / 2022-01

Astroscale pauses debris-removal demo following anomaly

S2 · 01/2022 · Astroscale

Record

CompanyAstroscale
Categorydefense space
Typemalfunction
Date01/2022
Time of daynot documented
Locationno physical site (recall / fleet-wide / aggregate record)
SeverityS2 (minor injury or single-unit damage)
Scale-
Confidencemedium
VerificationYes - adversarially checked against the cited source
SourceSpaceNews

What happened

Astroscale paused its ELSA-d debris-removal demonstration mission after an unexplained technical anomaly; later restarted with reduced thruster capacity.

Astroscale record context

Astroscale vs defense space alternatives

defense space context

defense space: entries by year

362019 S3: 11192020 S3: 11202021 S3: 12021 S4: 12212022 S2: 12022 S3: 12222023 S4: 11232024 S4: 11242025 S2: 12025 S3: 12025 S4: 46252026 S4: 6626
S1S2S3S4S5

defense space: failure modes

defense space: most entries

malfunction context

malfunction: by category

malfunction: by year

malfunction: severity profile

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