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UK Space Agency
Innovating partnership to make space sustainable
Customer
UK Space Agency provides technical advice on space strategy and guides the UK space sector to deliver the government’s vision. It designs programmes that implement government strategy and is also an early-stage investor in space research and development.
Challenge
Millions of items of space debris travelling at 17,000 miles per hour threaten to destroy or significantly damage active satellites and space assets such as the International Space Station. Tracking and disposing of them is expensive and time-consuming. The consortium wanted to make the process faster and more efficient.
Solution
- Fujitsu Digital Annealer and Quantum-Inspired Optimisation Services, combined with artificial neural networks (ANN), to solve some of the main problems with the commercial viability associated with active debris removal mission planning and design.
Outcomes
- 25% faster mission time, more efficient collection of space debris
- Fuel consumption has reduced by 18%
- Reduced costs due to lower fuel weight at launch
- Digital Annealer calculates mission scenarios 10,000+ times faster
