Britain will hold a nationwide public vote to name the four-armed robot that is to seize dead satellites in orbit and hurl them into the atmosphere, the UK Space Agency announced, adding that the winning entry will be stencilled on the spacecraft's hull in letters visible from the ground with a good pair of binoculars.
The ClearSpace UK vehicle, built under a £61.3 million contract, is to launch from SaxaVord in 2029 and spend up to twenty years working the orbital shell like a municipal refuse crew, closing its four manipulators around derelict hardware and steering it down to burn. Engineers in Sheffield have already begun rehearsing the grab on full-scale aluminium mock-ups suspended from gantries, running the sequence until the arms close in under nine seconds.
«We are treating every dead satellite as a household item left out on the pavement,» a programme official said. «The public will choose the name, and the machine will answer to it for the rest of its service life.»
Residents near the SaxaVord site have been issued a timetable of rehearsal nights, during which the mock capture will be repeated under floodlights until the arms no longer scrape the hull. The agency has also asked schools to submit drawings of the robot, which will be flown on a memory card inside the spacecraft.
By 2032 the first mission is due to be complete, after which ClearSpace UK intends to send further units to higher orbits, each one named by the same public vote, each one practising its grab on the ground until the arms close cleanly.