The first ever European deployment of an inflatable sail — designed to prevent the creation of future space junk — has been a success, the Surrey Space Centre (SSC) at the University of Surrey and the Von Karman Institute have announced.

They are celebrating the successful operation of their InflateSail mission, which has successfully tested both inflatable and ‘de-orbit sail’ technologies in space from a small nanosatellite.

SSC was responsible for the design, construction and testing of the spacecraft on behalf of the Belgium-based Von Karman Institute. Launched at the end of June, the InflateSail satellite is a milestone in the deployment of low-cost inflatable and sail technologies in space.

The nanosatellite demonstrated the effectiveness of using a drag sail in Low Earth Orbit to dramatically increase the rate at which a satellite loses altitude and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere, preventing it from adding to the 7,000 tonnes of ‘space junk’ already in orbit.

Since InflateSail’s first turn-on, SSC’s mission operations centre has been tracking it and receiving data from it. Over the next few months, the drag produced by the sail will gradually alter the satellite’s altitude, until it re-enters the Earth’s upper atmosphere and burns up.