About 35,000 pieces of space debris are flying around our Earth — meet the Swiss partnership determined to clear it up

Every week, about 50 satellites are launched into space. This number is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, and with it, an increased risk of collisions — creating debris.

These collisions would create problems for us on Earth — whether that be through taking down communications, transport or even banking systems.

But one team in Renens, Switzerland is actively working to find a solution for Earth’s space junk problem, through a world-first initiative: ClearSpace Mission-1.

“For 60 years, we’ve been putting satellites into orbit, and we essentially don’t remove them,” ClearSpace CEO Luc Piguet told CNBC’s Converge.

“The problem is all the predictions we made in the past, in terms of risks of collision in orbit, are not really applicable anymore. So, the risk is growing very rapidly,” Piquet added.

To support the team in this endeavour, the startup teamed up with another Swiss space specialist: Omega.

The luxury watchmaker, which was the first to send a watch to the moon in 1969, is hoping to create a long-lasting partnership based on common values.

“One of the big pillars of our DNA is the Space Odyssey. Omega has always been very much involved in what’s happening in the sky,” Raynald Aeschlimann, Omega’s CEO, said in an interview with CNBC’s Converge.  

“In 1962 we had the first ever Omega in space by Wally Schirra, his own Speedmaster. The best example of this is obviously Apollo 13, where we had to bring down the astronaut to Earth after this big engine electricity problem, and the famous moment where they came back in the atmosphere where they had to count 14 seconds, because it was so important in terms of timing, measuring time, measuring seconds,” Aeschlimann said.

“Their sense of quality and precision is something that inspires us. And then what we do, it’s almost orbital time pieces. So, it’s very close to it, in the sense that a space mission is a very precisely timed exercise,” ClearSpace’s Piguet said.

ClearSpace Mission-1 is scheduled to launch by 2028. It will target the European Space Agency’s first autonomous spacecraft Proba-1. The goal is to capture the object by enveloping it and securing it, before slowing it down and releasing it in the Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up above point Nemo in the South Pacific.

As satellites grow cheaper and smaller, the space economy is expected to boom over the next decade, with the global industry expected to be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035, according to McKinsey research.

This uptick makes space sustainability a pressing issue.

The European Space Agency is supporting ClearSpace’s project through an 86-million-euro contract. The total cost for the first mission is about 120 million euros. 

“Most of it is the non-recurring engineering cost,” Piguet explained.

“If you look at the last 60 years of space exploration, for example the mission to the moon, it didn’t make any financial sense. But it stimulated the U.S. industry at a level that today, they’re still benefiting from the effects,” he added.

Watch the video above to learn about ClearSpace’s first mission and how technology and sustainability are transforming space.