HPS prominently present at ESA’s Zero Debris Week

From 10 to 12 June 2025, everything at ESA’s European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt will be dominated by the highly ambitious “Zero Debris Program” of Europe’s space agency. The days are divided into two large action chapters: from June 10-11 at noon, the Zero Debris Future Symposium will focus in particular on high-level discussions of non-technical aspects, such as the future direction of the Zero Debris Initiative and its community, as well as commercial and political challenges in connection with orbital debris. Day two, June 11-12 at noon, will be dedicated to another working session on the Zero Debris Technical Booklet. Among other things, the technical leaders who will oversee the next edition of the booklet will be elected on this occasion. The participating organizations will also discuss how they have used the booklet so far, how the work on the booklet should be regulated and organized, and how the technologies listed in the booklet can be implemented.

The Zero Debris Technical Booklet published on January 15, 2025 lists technologies that ESA believes will contribute to achieving the goal of zero debris by 2030. The booklet is essentially a technical zero debris “to-do list”. The aim is to minimize the release of new debris and reduce its impact on people, infrastructure and the Earth’s environment.

Developed by a team of engineers, operators, lawyers, scientists and policy experts from a wide range of institutions in the Zero Debris community, the booklet identifies six key technology objectives that are essential to achieving Zero Debris goals:

• Preventing the release of new debris at any scale, from small particles to missile parts.
• Preventing the creation of debris from collisions or breakups.
• Improve monitoring and coordination of space traffic.
• Immediate evacuation of satellites from important low-Earth and geostationary orbits at the end of their mission.
• Preventing damage to the ground after re-entries.

ESA itself is focusing its efforts on the development of debris-resistant materials and technologies, the design of satellites that can be easily removed from orbit and do not burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere, and finally the development of standardized interfaces for efficient removal in the event of a malfunction.
Beyond the satellite itself, the focus is also on new systems to remove all components of the launch vehicle from orbit. Another source of debris are small particles released by certain types of fuel and pyrotechnics in orbit during deployment. Alternatives are to be developed for this. The distribution of space debris around the Earth highlights the importance of collision avoidance measures. Once the satellites are in operation, much can be gained by optimizing collision avoidance processes and space traffic management. A key element is improving tracking capabilities for smaller, currently untrackable debris objects to refine risk assessment.

Operational practices can also be optimized, supported by new technologies to improve communication infrastructure and spacecraft health monitoring. At the end of a mission, the deorbit and re-entry process (for LEO and MEO satellites) and the impact on the environment need to be considered. Active debris removal services are required in orbit, as well as reducing the environmental impact of debris re-entry on the ocean and atmosphere, which will begin with further research.

Participation in ESA’s Zero Debris Initiative is a top priority for HPS – and accordingly, HPS CEO Ernst K. Pfeiffer will take part in the central program items on both days in Darmstadt. HPS’s commitment goes far beyond academic aspects, as the company has already made a remarkable contribution to avoiding space debris with its ADEO Deorbit Module product family by rapidly removing disused satellites from orbit; in addition, it is already on the threshold of Phase B with initial developments for a detector for previously undetectable particles from 0.1 to 10 mm in size called SAILOR.

The HPS boss doesn’t mince his words when it comes to emphasizing the importance of the ESA initiative: “The Zero-Debris Initiative is a start, but we are still a long way to our goal. We still have to reach an important milestone, and that is directly in the minds of the target groups: In parts of the space community, the debris issue is still seen as merely a green nice-to-have topic. This is absolutely wrong: it is an issue of great commercial interest and value, because if the littering of orbits continues at this rate, economically viable activities in space will soon be history – and that so before they have really taken off.”

HPS puts ADEO know-how at the service of ESA´s Hungarian Prime C3S

It seems to be a basic law of nature: Wherever and however humans are active, they end up producing large quantities of waste. To suppress the problem, many terrestrial areas, the oceans and, in recent decades, outer space itself have become dumping grounds. However, the latter in particular is now threatening to take radical revenge, as flying debris from previous space missions is increasingly becoming a threat to all other activities, especially in the most frequented orbits between 200 and 1200 kilometers.

While large debris such as burnt-out rocket stages are the easiest to detect and can be avoided by new guests in orbit, it is the small projectiles, flying with 5-10 km/s orbital speed, which have often shrunk below millimeter size as a result of previous fragmentations, that pose the greatest threats. Even one millimeter-sized debris impact can render a satellite inoperable. Emerging their threat further, their flux increases significantly as their size decreases, with the consequence that the much more frequent impacts of debris of this size can pose a far greater risk to space operations than the more dramatic catastrophic incidents.

However, only larger debris can be observed and tracked from the ground – but not in the critical range of 0.1 to 50 mm. Therefore, measurements in situ, i.e. directly in orbit, are urgently needed to make it possible to describe the Earth’s flying garbage dump with sufficient reliability in the first place. After critically weighing up the alternatives, ESA has turned its attention to a possible large-area detector based on the successful ADEO deorbit sails from HPS. If the sail membranes are now equipped with acoustic sensors and cameras on board, it will be possible to measure the dust flow in the required size range. The name of the project: SAILOR – Sail Array for Impact Logging in Orbit.

The spacecraft consists of two large detector surfaces 100 cm apart. The two sails have an exposed surface area of 25 m2; in the ADEO program, they are the main actors of the large dragsail versions under the name ADEO-L. The membranes are around 10 μm thick and are held in position by extendable cross booms. The booms are stowed together with the sail membranes during launch and deployed in orbit. The deployment module in which booms and sails are integrated, consists of a deploying mechanism with a motor that pushes the boom arms outwards. A system of multiple cameras is mounted to a separate boom to document the holes created on the inner surface of both sail membranes. Acoustic sensors are attached to the sails to detect an impact in real time. The interaction of SAILOR’s technical equipment will ultimately allow the density, speed and trajectory of the small debris to be determined.

The ambitious ESA project SAILOR is currently in the transition from Phase A to Phase B1, which will also include the construction of breadboard models of the spacecraft and its electronics as well as the associated test programs. It also involves these steps:

• Production of test samples of the proposed membrane equipped with the acoustic sensors
• Tests of sail folding for stowage
• Testing of the boom and sail deployment mechanisms
• A high-speed (hypervelocity) impact test program to test the sails and sensors
• Testing a camera system to image holes in the sail
• Preliminary design of the spacecraft including suppliers for all critical components and subsystems. PDR is currently planned to be achieved until 2028.

Overall, the specifications of the project in this phase should lead to a positive decision at the ESA Ministerial Council meeting in Bremen in November 2025 on the continuation of a three-year mission at an altitude of 850 km to be launched in 2031/2032. The industrial team proposes a small precursor CubeSat mission, called OPTIMIST after this type of sailboat, to test the sensor technology using an approx. 10 m2 membrane as early as 2027/2028 as risk mitigation for the full-scale mission.

The industrial structure behind SAILOR also stands for this. This is because C3S, a leading Hungarian aerospace company, is acting as prime contractor for an ESA project of this kind for the first time, drawing on the expertise of ADEO inventor HPS GmbH as a subcontractor for the deployable membrane subsystem. C3S is also planning work shares for HPS in Romania. HPS CEO Ernst K. Pfeiffer: “The great enthusiasm with which we have taken on our role in this project rests on three pillars: firstly, it is existentially important for the space industry as a whole; secondly, it is an opportunity for us as HPS to impressively demonstrate the versatility of the ADEO technology from our company; and thirdly, we consider it eminently important in Europe that the industrial talents of Hungary and Romania are finally brought to light in an appropriate way, and that in a joint mission. We at HPS are delighted to be working under the project management of C3S.”

HPS with ADEO product family: top position in NASA’s technology report extended

A year ago, the deorbit module from HPS took its place at the top of the podium of the most important technology achievements according to NASA. This was because ADEO already had everything that the American space agency considered crucial for success at the time: top values up to TRL9, scalability and proven flight heritage. Exactly one year later: ADEO, now supplemented in the technology report by the presentation of the bestsellers ADEO-Cube and ADEO-Pico, maintains its position both against numerous Dragsail competitors and against other passive deorbit technologies.

HPS CEO Ernst K. Pfeiffer comments: “With ADEO, we are surfing at the top of the wave worldwide that we have created ourselves with this technology over many years of R&D – often with significant co-financing by ESA and DLR plus considerable company resources. And we are actually delighted with every attempt by other companies to establish deorbit sails on the market: The bigger they make the wave, the higher our product family sails on its crest.”

January 2025

ADEO – Space Heritage

ADEO (Atmospheric Deorbit Sail Module) is the name for an entire product family of drag sails for satellites from the German space company HPS, Munich. They accelerate the disposal of satellites from space to a period of less than five years and thus fulfill the prerequisite for the satellite to receive approval for launch into space in the first place.

The sail is scalable and available in many variants from series production. ADEO-N is tailored to small satellite missions of 20-250 kg, while the ADEO-M and ADEO-L series are designed for larger missions of 100-700 kg and 500-1500 kg respectively. The ADEO-N series corresponds to a sail size of 5±2 m2, while ADEO-M covers areas of 15 ± 5 m2 and ADEO-L 25 m2 and more. However, smaller versions have also been available for a year, especially for cubesats, e.g. an ADEO-P for 1U-6U satellites (1-20 kg) and an ADEO-C for larger cubesats (5-50 kg). A total of five versions are currently available to order, all of which reliably dispose of satellites from LEO – including those from higher MEO orbits when combined with satellite’s onboard propulsion – within the required time frame. A corresponding configurator for selecting the perfectly suitable ADEO module is available for individual mission calculation (ADEO Online Configurator).

Now there is a short film about the production and testing of the product family, as well as ADEO’s heritage story:

Based on over ten years of development, HPS has successfully completed a series of missions up to “full burn” and has thus firmly established itself at the top of deorbit technologies at qualification level TRL 9.
2018: ADEO-N1 (“NABEO”) was launched on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket kick stage back in 2018, with Peter Beck himself (CEO RocketLab) even personally handling the sail. On this flight, the sail was unfurled just 90 minutes after the launch. Visual ground observations confirmed the successfully deployed sail and its performance.

2021: In June 2021, ADEO-N2 (“Show me your Wings”) was launched into space by the spacecraft carrier ION-003 of the Italian launch service provider D-Orbit, as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-2 mission. The successful deployment of the sail in December 2022 was recorded by the ION carrier’s on-board camera. The integrity of the sail after one year in orbit was confirmed, again by means of the onboard camera. On December 8, 2024, HPS received confirmation that ADEO-N2 had completed its mission with deployment of the dragsail at 506 km orbit altitude in a record time of just two years after the 210 kg satellite’s “end-of-business” with fireworks of success at 120 km orbit altitude, beating international rules and regulations by three full years.

Even NASA ranks the ADEO module from HPS as the number one automatic passive deorbit technology in view of the qualification and Flight Heritage.

ADEO is now a bestseller not only with European institutions and companies, but also in the fully commercial markets of the USA and Canada.

Highest qualification levels, proven reliability and flight heritage combined with scalability, availability and attractive pricing make the ADEO product family a highly visible beacon in the global field of deorbit systems for all satellites that must comply with the new 5-year deorbit requirement to obtain launch authorization.

Click here for the latest clip about ADEO

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Video: © HPS GmbH, Munich, Germany, www.hps-gmbh.com
Production: Daniela Creutz, www.bluecirceproductions.com
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WILD RIDE mission ends with fireworks of success for deorbit sail ADEO-N2

Three days ago, on December 8, 2024, HPS received confirmation that ADEO-N2 completed its mission with launch in 2021 and end-of-business with deployment of the dragsail at 506 km orbit altitude in December 2022 in a record time of only two years with a firework of success, beating international rules and regulations by three full years. This is further proof of the success of the German ADEO model, which is manufactured in series production by the German world market leader HPS for all sizes of LEO satellites in five ADEO versions. ADEO fulfils the “5-year rule” already issued by several states and organizations for obtaining launch and operating permits for satellites, and with “Wild Ride” this has now even been verified in orbit by precisely tracking the deorbit curve until the satellite burns up completely at an orbital altitude of approx. 127 km (see image).

About the mission:
On June 30, 2021, D-Orbit, a leading company in the space logistics and orbital transportation industry from Italy, announced the successful launch of another ION Satellite Carrier (ION SCV 003), its proprietary orbital transport vehicle. It lifted off at 9:31 p.m. CEST on June 30, 2021 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), Florida. That same day, 60 minutes after launch, the vehicle was successfully placed into a 500 km high Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO).
ION Satellite Carrier is a space transporter developed, manufactured and operated by D-Orbit. ION is capable of accommodating multiple satellites, transporting them into space, performing orbital maneuvers and precisely releasing them into dedicated orbital positions.
At the end of the so-called WILD RIDE mission, the ION SCV 003, weighing 210 kg at the time, entered the deorbit phase on December 15,2022 with the deployment of ADEO-N2 (effective sail size 3.6 m2, christened “Show me your Wings”) entered the deorbit phase and began testing the world’s first precise functional in-situ verification of a dragsail, with official “end of flight” on 08.12.2024 [source: NORAD], i.e. within exactly 2 years in a completely natural way and without exhaust gases from any propulsion system. Without sails, SCV-003’s deorbit would have taken twice to three times as long.

About ADEO:
ADEO-N is a 1U-sized deorbit sail module developed by the German space company HPS, in cooperation with several companies and institutions (e.g. DLR and Fraunhofer), co-funded by the ESA-GSTP program, the German national technology program, and the Bavarian technology program. In accordance with the new rules, ADEO ensures the removal of end-of-life satellites from LEO within a maximum of 5 years.

November 2024

HPS and EXOLAUNCH: Making Space Clean Again

HPS is happy to join forces with the Germany-based Exolaunch and is fully engaged to support customers of Exolaunch by enabling this very special and successful NewSpace-launch service provider to grant priority access to the delivery schedule of flight-proven ADEO* deorbit sails which are currently in high demand.

EXOLAUNCH’s COO Jeanne Allarie and HPS’s CEO Ernst Pfeiffer signed an Agreement on Space Tech Expo 2024 in Bremen in a great joint spirit (see pictures) the ambitious endeavour of

• being a role model for a sustainable use of space and
• of raising awareness with all potential customers on an existing solution for deorbiting: ADEO-modules are easy, affordable and reliable to contributing significantly to Making Space Clean Again.

See for the respective EXOLAUNCH announcement

(* ADEO-modules are needed to allow a satellite deorbit after its “End-of-Business” within five years; satellites without this or any kind of deorbit accelerator do not get clearance for launch anymore.)

October 2024

Clean Space Days der ESA im Oktober: ADEO aus dem Hause HPS im Fokus

In 2024, the ESA’s Clean Space Team once again invited participants to the continuation of the past Clean Space Days.
The four-day event will focus on progress in the areas of eco-design, zero debris and in-orbit maintenance.
The calendar of presentations in 2024 will highlight these topics, among others:

• Life cycle assessment for space activities
• Deorbit technologies
• Debris disposal
• Disturbance-free skies for astronomy
• IOS missions
• Circular economy for space travel

While some presentations tended to highlight ideas and technical concepts in statu nascendi, HPS manager Frank Hoffmann presented the ADEO product family, which is already successful on the European and, more recently, North American markets: Deorbit sail technology for automatic self-disposal of the satellite at the end of the mission.
The ADEO system offers a suitably customized solution for every class of spacecraft, whether as a “Pico” (1-20 kg), “Cube” (5-50 kg), “Nano” (20-250 kg), “Medium” (100-700 kg) or even “Large” (500-1500 kg). To ensure that satellite manufacturers are supplied without delay, all orders are handled by HPS directly from series production wherever possible.

Due to the fact that the requirement to carry a suitable disposal system such as ADEO is a prerequisite for launch authorization for practically all satellites from October 2024, longer delivery times are possible and can be largely avoided by ordering early.

The Clean Space Days will come to an end at the end of the week, but the saying “after the event is before the event” also applies to this successful European space event.

September 2024

ADEO Pico: The smallest dragsail gains a foothold in the largest market

Deorbit Technology from HPS

With the ink now drying under the contract for a PICO-class satellite deorbit device from the ADEO dragsail family of HPS, the Munich-based space technology company is now also setting foot on North American soil: After careful consideration of the alternatives, the Canadian company StarSpec Technologies decided in favor of the system for integration on their InspireSAT 12U ADCS MVP satellite, to be launched in 2026.

The ADEO-P was purchased at the beginning of July. The integration will be carried out by the experts in 2025. The satellite is planned to be launched in 2026 aboard a Falcon9 as part of the Transporter-17 SmallSat Rideshire mission from the Vandenburg Space Force Base in the USA. At the end of the mission, the dragsail will be deployed to a size of 1.4 m2 and automatically dispose of the satellite within the now obligatory period of less than five years. The satellite will burn up in the atmosphere without leaving any residue.

This initiative promotes StarSpec’s high precision space-qualified ADCS components, including sub-arcsecond precision star cameras, cogless reaction wheels, and ultra-high-bandwidth controllers, providing 100x the precision and imaging quality for LEO imaging satellite.

Jason Brown, Mechanical & Technology Lead, commented on the key factors leading to the selection of the ADEO-P for InspireSAT: “A primary mandate of InspireSAT is to provide high performance in-orbit capabilities in a way that does not compromise and strongly maintains the continued and future utility of LEO. We are delighted to have HPS, a proven high-tech specialist in the international space industry, at our side, allowing StarSpec Technologies to maintain its sustainable and orbit-conscious approach to space in a way that maintains focus on the successful demonstration of our transformative state-of-the-art ADCS. Thanks HPS!”

August 2024

HPS CEO: “Wishing my namesake a happy return home”

As a rule, the purpose of a satellite, be it scientific or commercial, is the focus of interest. However, there are also a few exceptions that confirm this rule. One of these is the recently launched flight of an inconspicuous 18-kilo box with a Falcon 9 from SpaceX to a low target orbit at an altitude of 510 kilometers. The name: ERNST – abbreviation for “Experimental Space Application of Nano-Satellite Technology”. Its mission: to use infrared detectors from space to detect where in the world civilian or military rockets are being launched as they fly over the earth based on the hot radiation of combustion gases – and which target they are probably aiming for. This type of technology has long been standard in the USA in the technical instruments for the nation’s fourth branch of the armed forces after the army, air force and navy, the “Space Forces”; in Europe, research in this area is still in its infancy by comparison, which is why the ERNST mission represents an important milestone for Germany.

This application-related research purpose of ERNST is still at a highly experimental early stage, but the renowned Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg is relying on tried and tested principles to avoid space debris: a braking system with a deployable sail for accelerated return at the end of the approximately three-year mission is also on board. This is a version customized by the Fraunhofer Institute for theERNST mini-satellite. HPS collaborated with Fraunhofer on the sail almost ten years ago as part of a master’s thesis and provided support. HPS is now a pioneer of the technology and currently the world’s only commercial supplier of flight-tested automatic brake sails of the so-called ADEO family, with a total of 5 different product versions for all size classes of LEO satellites. ADEO braking sails are currently becoming standard equipment, because from fall 2024 at the latest, no satellite will be transported into space by the de facto monopoly provider SpaceX without such on-board technology for accelerated return under the new FCC regulations after the end of the mission.

“After a certain period of familiarization with the new legal situation, the run on ADEO brake sails is now in full swing. Customers in North America have also built up a great deal of trust in ADEO and HPS; the fact that HPS with ADEO occupies the lone top position in the NASA technology report on deorbit technologies is certainly helpful here. In this respect, we are naturally extremely pleased that, in addition to our commercial system on the market, we are now also securing further points for product trust and popularity through our collaboration with one of the world’s most famous German research institutes. That’s why, for once, I don’t see the operational research mission as the highlight here, but rather its end, and I wish my namesake a happy journey home,” comments Ernst K. Pfeiffer, CEO of HPS.

© Fraunhofer EMI

© Fraunhofer EMI

August 2024

ESA: 1 million for product innovation by HPS, AAC and DLR

ESA’s GSTP program is one of the European Space Agency’s most important instruments for promoting new technologies, particularly those generated by SMEs. The program also enjoys high priority in the overall ESA portfolio at the German space agency; the corresponding financial resources now also enable the launch of a new sub-program called “Product Initiative”. With the signing of the contract on August 7, 2024, ESA and HPS as the main contractor gave the go-ahead for the first technology project in this category.

It took just over six months from the idea to the signing of the contract; the funding amount is one million euros. The Munich-based space technology company HPS and its long-standing partner, Vienna-based Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH, are contributing 20 percent of their own funds, while the DLR Institute of Space Systems in Bremen is also on board on the research side. Over the next 24 months, highly innovative films (working name “ProFilm”) will be developed in various thicknesses and surface configurations and for large-area applications, which are characterized by two special features in particular:

• they are resistant to the chemically aggressive residual oxygen molecules (ATOX-resistant) and are therefore perfectly suited for use in particular in the highly frequented low earth orbit LEO area,
• Special derivatives are invisible or non-reflective.

In addition to use as thermal insulation for satellites, this also results in innovative applications as invisible brake sails as a further development of the HPS ADEO product range for deorbiting decommissioned satellites.

In this way, they serve four strategic goals of European space:

• Securing technological independence from other major spacefaring nations that have already made progress in this area
• Support European manufacturers of spacecraft and satellites, for whom maximum physical protection is an element of the competitiveness of their products
• Avoidance of astronomy-hostile light pollution in space through non-reflective surfaces on dragsails and thermal insulation such as MLIs and SLIs. There are also plans to use them for solar panels and radiators.

The ideas go as far as deployable structures that could make entire satellites invisible with ProFilm.

HPS CEO Ernst K. Pfeiffer is enthusiastic about the start of the project: “The innovation processes that have now been initiated will result in highly exciting products – the cooperation with our partners, DLR in the north and AAC GmbH in the south, alone is a guarantee of this. Above all, however, this premiere of ESA’s new GSTP sub-programme shows how quickly and effectively the European space agency can identify, accept and master technical challenges. This is exactly what European space travel needs, and this is exactly what innovation drivers from the ranks of SMEs need in particular.”