Orbit is a finite resource, and it is being consumed.
ESA states the position plainly: even if every launch on Earth stopped tomorrow, the debris population would keep growing — fragmentation events create new debris faster than the atmosphere can drag it down. That is a runaway process, and it ends with specific altitude bands becoming unusable for everyone, permanently.
Everything the next decade depends on flies through those bands: global connectivity, financial settlement, navigation, weather, earth observation, defence. There is no version of the 2030s that works if low Earth orbit closes.
Three businesses, one fleet.
Removal is the entry point, not the product. The asset is what removal creates: a swept, instrumented, continuously monitored volume of orbit that somebody else needs and cannot make for themselves.
Active debris removal
Autonomous capture spacecraft rendezvous with derelicts, spent upper stages and failed satellites, arrest the tumble, and drive them to a controlled destructive re-entry. Priced per object, weighted by mass, tumble rate and orbital energy.
Orbital corridor rights
A cleared corridor is a defined altitude-and-inclination volume that SKYKNET has swept, catalogued and continues to screen for conjunctions, with sweeper drones on station to respond. Operators lease capacity in it the way a carrier leases spectrum or a tenant leases a floor.
Life extension & end-of-life
Tugs dock with customer satellites to extend service life, relocate them between planes, or guarantee disposal at end of mission. Disposal sold up front as a bonded commitment makes a satellite cheaper to insure — the underwriter pays for the certainty.
The fleet is unmanned and autonomous by design.
Three vehicle classes. No crew, and no ground-in-the-loop for capture — a closing sequence runs faster than the light-time-plus-human-reaction budget allows, so it flies itself.
Small-debris interceptor
Flies in swarms off a single deployment bus. Optical and radar terminal guidance, net and tether capture for uncooperative targets, then a de-orbit burn or drag-sail deployment.
- Crew
- None
- Autonomy
- Terminal, closed-loop
- Target class
- 1 cm – 500 kg
- Disposition
- Controlled re-entry
Derelict & upper-stage tug
High delta-v vehicle for the objects that actually drive the cascade: abandoned rocket bodies and multi-tonne dead satellites. Robotic capture at the launch adapter ring, tumble arrest, then controlled disposal — or relocation, if the customer wants the asset kept alive.
- Crew
- None
- Capture
- Robotic, adapter-ring
- Target class
- 500 kg – 9 t
- Secondary role
- Life extension
SKYKNET ONE
What flies in the space we open. Optical crosslinks to its neighbours, direct-to-device service to the ground, and a hosted-payload bay leased by the slot. SKYKNET ONE is the Block III node, and the vehicle in the orbital view above is one in cruise configuration.
- Crew
- None
- Crosslink
- Optical, mesh
- Downlink
- Direct-to-device + Ka
- Crosslink capacity
- 800 Gbps
- Instrument
- 1.4 m deep-field
By 2036: a cleared-corridor grid that keeps the planet online when the ground fails.
Terrestrial infrastructure has one failure mode that no amount of redundancy fixes: it is on the ground, where the cables get cut, the exchanges flood, the power drops and the borders close. The grid is the layer that does not care.
First clearance contract
SK-1 demonstration mission: rendezvous, capture and controlled de-orbit of a catalogued derelict. The objective is not the object — it is the precedent, the insurance rating and the pricing baseline that every contract afterwards gets written against.
Corridor One declared
The first swept, catalogued and continuously screened orbital corridor, with sweepers on station. First commercial leases signed. This is the moment cleared orbit stops being a service and becomes a tradeable asset.
Grid nodes in service
SK-9 nodes fly inside our own corridors on optical mesh crosslinks. Sovereign continuity contracts begin: guaranteed fallback connectivity for states and critical operators, billed on availability rather than bandwidth.
Direct-to-device at scale
Standards-track service to unmodified handsets. That track is already real: 3GPP froze its Release 19 satellite non-terrestrial network specifications in December 2025, 6G study work began at the end of 2025 with normative specifications following from Release 21, and phones including the Pixel 9 and Galaxy S25 already carry satellite messaging. The grid is built to be the space segment that standard finds waiting for it.
The grid closes
Continuous multi-corridor coverage: every point on Earth in view of the mesh at all times, independent of any national ground segment, any subsea cable and any single government. Clearance operations continue in perpetuity — a corridor is only worth leasing for as long as it stays swept.
What the grid is actually for.
Planet-wide outage contingency
Subsea cable cuts, routing failures, national internet shutdowns and grid collapse are not hypotheticals — they are scheduled events with unknown dates. A space segment on optical crosslinks does not cross anyone's territory to get where it is going. Sold to states, carriers and critical operators as guaranteed availability.
Decentralised finance that stays settled
A distributed ledger is only as decentralised as its transport layer. If block propagation depends on the terrestrial internet, then whoever controls that internet has leverage over consensus. The grid carries block data and transaction broadcast as a one-to-many downlink — receive-only, no account, no subscription — reaching nodes in jurisdictions that have switched their networks off.
Hybrid satellite and 6G handsets
Non-terrestrial networking is becoming a standard capability rather than an accessory: Release 19 satellite specifications froze in December 2025, normative 6G work follows from Release 21, and major European carrier groups have direct-to-device broadband trials running through 2026. Handsets will roam to orbit without the user noticing. The constraint on that future is not the standard — it is whether there is clear orbit to fly the space segment in.
Critical infrastructure and response
Power dispatch, port and rail logistics, aviation, pipeline telemetry, defence and disaster response all run on links that assume the ground works. Grid service is contracted as the layer that carries the minimum viable signal when it does not — the command channel that survives the event.
Cleared orbit is real estate. We are in the business of making it.
Debris removal on its own is a cost centre somebody has to be persuaded to fund. Removal that produces a leasable, insurable, defensible asset is a different business entirely — and the asset appreciates, because nobody is making any more orbit.
| Line | What is sold | Model |
|---|---|---|
| Clearance | Removal of a specified object, to a specified disposal standard, with verification. | Per object · milestone |
| Corridor lease | Tenancy in a swept, screened and actively defended orbital volume, conjunction management included. | Annual · per slot-plane |
| Custody | Life extension, plane relocation, and bonded end-of-life disposal for customer spacecraft. | Subscription · insurance-linked |
| Continuity | Guaranteed fallback connectivity for a state, carrier or critical operator, billed on availability. | Sovereign contract · multi-year |
| Hosted payload | Rack space, power and downlink on an SK-9 node for a third-party instrument. | Lease · per slot, per year |
| Intelligence | Conjunction screening, catalogue access and orbital environment forecasting. | Data subscription |
The orbits worth having will be claimed once.
SKYKNET is opening early access for launch operators, constellation programmes, underwriters, sovereign continuity buyers and infrastructure capital.