An illustration of Astroscale's ELSA-d spacecraft approaching a piece of simulated debris. (Image credit: Astroscale)

Technologies developed and tested in orbit to remove space junk and fix broken satellites can be speedily repurposed to build fleets of bodyguard spacecraft to protect important satellites from adversary attacks, space clean-up company Astroscale thinks.

Astroscale made history with its 2024 up-close in-orbit inspection of a discarded Japanese rocket stage during the pioneering ADRAS-J mission in low Earth orbit (LEO), the region of space below altitudes of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers).

The firm's ELSA-D mission , which ran from 2021 to 2024, was the first commercial endeavor to demonstrate orbital capture technologies in LEO.…