Commercial Aspects of Active Debris Removal: Technical and LegalChallenges

Earth Orbit is a limited resource and its sustainability is at stake. Various commercial solutions are recommended to handle the trash in the space. Studies are reflecting that at this pace especially when the global space community participation is rapidly increasing, incidents of collisions are highly possible and in case of damage for commercial space application based operations. This new era of a ‘space race’ has embarked a few conclusions raising not only technological concerns, but also a host of economic, legal/regulatory, and corporate responsibilities associated with debris remediation and mitigation. The intent behind this paper is to identify what elements would be necessary for an ADR concept to be considered both technical and non-technical and how to address them. Lastly the gravity of the situation of debris removal is also assessed through a comparative analysis of various case study methods across the global.