GMV key role in CAT-IOD, the ESA’s pioneering mission in Active Debris Removal

GMV is advancing in potentially become one of the first European company, if not the first one, in testing in orbit key technologies and operations for and to perform cooperative and non-cooperative ADR exercises in space for prepared satellites.

In early 2015 GMV started working, together with ESA, in addressing how to increase the feasibility of successfully and safely performing ADR missions (both in terms of cost and technically) by identifying concepts that could be hosted on board a spacecraft to facilitate future ADR scenarios. Those concepts included three major elements: aids to support tracking and pose estimation of the debris (from ground and on-orbit), aids to facilitate capture, and space systems for attitude stabilization after operational lifetime/at end of life.

As result of this effort, GMV, in close collaboration with different partners, started working on multiples concepts, among those PRINCE, a passive mechanical interface with integrated rendezvous / navigation aids suitable to enable the safe capture and removal of a prepared non-operational/non-cooperative satellite for uncontrolled re-entry (i.e. no high thrust manoeuvres / loads because of controlled re-entry burns). As from ESA’s specifications, PRINCE had to minimize its impact on the target satellite (power, mass, and volume), and reduce the risk, cost and/or complexity of a chaser, which will perform the capture of the non-operational satellite after end-of-life.

Nowadays, after almost ten years of hard work, five over six of the currently under design new generation of EU Copernicus Sentinel Expansion missions, will be equipped with a set of elements facilitating their safe removal in case of contingencies, being MICE, the passive interface derived from PRINCE, developed by GMV in strict collaboration with AVS. 

In 2021, GMV, AVS and Admatis were awarded from ESA with the CAT (Capture Bay Design and End-to-End Verification of Design for Removal) project, devoted to design, build and validate a Capture Bay for ADR, the active counterpart of MICE.

Finally, 2023 and 2025 have been witness of GMV being awarded by ESA with two successive projects devoted to study a mission, CAT-IOD, whose objective is the in-orbit demonstration of the 1:1 version of the CAT solution while mounted on a servicer satellite and used to capture the MICE installed on the client satellite. 

With the idea of proposing CAT-IOD for member state approval during the November 2025 Ministerial Conference (CM25), ESA is thus running two parallel Phase A activities/contracts. GMV is participating in both. In one as mission and P/L prime, in collaboration with AVS, OHB Luxemburg, RedWire and Astroscale; the second one as mission co-prime and P/L prime, under the leadership of Astroscale, from UK. 

CAT IOD mission is today a key ingredient/cornerstone of ESA’s ambitious objective/goal to achieve the goal of "Zero Debris" by 2030. Over the next 9 months CAT-IOD Phase-A will assess the feasibility of the proposed mission concepts, the design of the servicer spacecraft, the maturation of the CAT flight model, and to confirm its target satellite, being today the AVS’s S/C, LUR-1. To recall that LUR-1, successful deployed in August 2024, is already equipped with a MICE passive capture interface and the necessary navigation aid devices.

GMV is working hard to make CAT-IOD happening, confirming its compromise/commitment to contribute to a safer and sustainable space environment.