Translations

D-ORBIT, the space cleaner

4. Environment

Waste management

Sector Telecommunication, Medias, ITC

Year 2016

Country Italy

Transmitter

Context

D-Orbit is an Italian start-up created in 2011 by Luca Rossettini in order to target the space debris mitigation market, in other words to contribute cleaning space from old satellites that have been gathered there in the previous years (about 4’000 of them are currently orbiting around us according to certain estimations, of which only 1’200 satellites are still functioning). Observing that usual on-board propulsive systems are not optimized for end-of-life manoeuvrers, making them long and expensive, D-Orbit provides a combination of state-of-the-art devices and proven strategies enabling operators to remove satellites at the end of a mission or in case of a failure.

Objectives

Communicate about the urging situation resulting from the huge spatial dump orbiting the Earth
Slow then stop the gathering phenomenon of old satellites around the Earth
Limit the risks of crash, collisions and chain reactions
Deliver economic benefit to the final user of the products to increase market penetration

APPROACH

Luca Rossettini has always been passionate about space and therefore wanted to become an astronaut. Unfortunately, he failed the selection but that day he decided to dedicate his professional life to space from the Earth by initiating its cleaning up.

An observation, an emergency, a potential market:

Only a few people know that something is missing on usual landscapes of Earth taken from the Moon: a huge dump made of hundreds of thousands of old space junk that have gathered there since men are able to launch something in space.

This results from the sloppiness of aero spatial stakeholders which primarily focus on costs rather than on environmental issues: both end-of-life and non-functional satellites do not have enough fuel to be properly decommissioned and end up orbiting the Earth without a goal.

Rossettini argues that in addition to the environmental concern, this trend could cause a major chain reaction in case of a collision between two devices and therefore possibly damage working satellites and even end up with a crash on the Earth’s surface.

Rossettini decided to stand against this untold phenomenon by developing state-of-the-art devices (innovative technology patented in 11 countries) that are plugged onto soon-to-be launched satellites and that are intended to help operators to decommission these metal beasts. To help him achieve his mission, he successfully raised large amounts of money from several investors that allowed him to hire young and bright engineers who brought new breaking ideas and a strong communicative asset to D-Orbit. In addition to his work as a CEO, Rossettini keeps attending forums and conferences all over the world in order to raise awareness among populations about the reality of the orbital dump.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

D-Orbit became the market leader, leading the future in satellite fleet management;
Its products and services multiply its customers’ spatial assets value by 10, improving the return to investors at the same time

Benefits

By removing old satellites in a quick and safe manner, D-Orbit enables a profitable and durable exploitation of space maximizing the space assets of their customers;
D-Orbit aims at lowering the risks of a possible chain reaction that could cause a major crash on the surface and harm many people;
D-Orbit’s products are designed to solve global challenges with a high social impact. Luca Rossettini adds that positive relationships between stakeholders especially employees is a leverage of value creation.