Astroscale

Astroscale leads the orbital debris removal market with a 15-year joint mission with JAXA, having secured over $400 million in funding. Its Active Debris Removal service already demonstrated the capture of a defunct Japanese rocket stage in 2025, outperforming #10 Relativity Space’s debris-monitoring proposals by proving real-world capability in orbit. With 90% of satellite breakup events occurring in low Earth orbit, Astroscale targets the top 100 high-risk objects, and its ELSA-M mission (launching 2026) is scheduled to remove five dead satellites per flight at 40% lower cost than the average competitor’s single-target approach.