Lisbon Researchers Develop Gecko-Grip Satellites to Clean Space Debris
Atlantic winds still sweep over Lisbon’s rooftops, yet the most ambitious Portuguese engineering today is unfolding hundreds of kilometres above the clouds. From a modest control room at Instituto Superior Técnico, researchers are rehearsing the moment a small robotic craft will stretch out a synthetic “hand” and cling to a scrap of orbiting metal. If the mission works, Portugal will help solve one of the most pressing environmental headaches of the 21st-century: keeping Earth’s skies free of dangerous space debris.
Portugal steps into orbit — for keeps
For decades the country’s space sector was largely about using satellites launched elsewhere. That mindset is fading fast. Lisbon-based labs now build guidance software, Porto designs sensor payloads, and Guimarães hosts a new Space Hub aimed at turning university prototypes into exportable hardware. The change has been propelled by national funding schemes tied to Estratégia Portugal Espaço 2030 and by access to European Innovation Council grants that reward unconventional ideas. Nothing illustrates the shift better than gEICKo, a €4 M consortium whose star attraction is a piece of bio-inspired tech that grips like a gecko and lets go on command.
Gecko science meets space junk
Every minute, tens of thousands of metal fragments race round the planet at 27 000 km/h. A paint fleck can punch a crater in a solar array; a spent rocket stage could cripple an entire telecoms constellation. Conventional clean-up tools — nets, harpoons, rigid robot arms — all risk creating fresh shrapnel if they miss. The gEICKo team is betting instead on dry-adhesive pads patterned with microscopic pillars. Those pillars generate van der Waals forces identical to the ones that let Mediterranean geckos scamper across marble walls in Alfama. In theory, the pad can make repeated contacts on dusty, dented or even curved satellite panels without leaving residue or seizing up in extreme temperatures.
Inside the Lisbon lab
Técnico’s Institute for Systems and Robotics is responsible for the satellite’s guidance, navigation and control software — the GNC “brain”. Professor Rodrigo Ventura’s group has spent 18 months teaching algorithms to gauge spin rates, predict tumble paths and choreograph approach maneuvers that end just millimetres from a non-cooperative target. While partners in Braunschweig and Saarbrücken perfect the adhesive tiles — successfully tested aboard NASA’s free-flying Astrobee robots on the ISS last July — Lisbon programmers run thousands of synthetic orbits through high-fidelity simulators. So far the public updates stop short of unveiling hardware, yet the consortium insists a full-scale capture demo will be ready before the grant window closes in 2027.
How gEICKo compares with Europe’s other trash collectors
Portugal already plays a supporting role in ClearSpace-1 and ADRIOS, two ESA-backed missions that opt for articulating claws to de-orbit large rocket bodies. Those projects command budgets north of €100 M and plan launches as early as 2026. By contrast, gEICKo’s lean €4 M envelope forces the team to keep the platform light, modular and energy-frugal. ESA analysts say a gecko-pad system could attach to objects lacking grapple fixtures, extending clean-up to smaller debris at a fraction of the cost per kilogram. The trade-off is that adhesion must hold in vacuum while surviving repeated thermal cycles — a materials challenge still under scrutiny.
Campus to cosmos: a wider Portuguese push
While Técnico grabs headlines, other campuses are reinforcing the sustainability agenda. Coimbra engineers are prototyping low-cost telescopes that catalogue debris no larger than a bolt, vital for collision avoidance alerts. The Orbiting Sustainability initiative at the University of Lisbon is testing outreach kits that let high-schoolers simulate orbital traffic in augmented reality. Up north, the newly opened Guimarães Space Hub couples CEiiA’s manufacturing floor with University of Minho researchers to spin off hardware for Earth-observation nano-satellites. Together, these projects hint at a virtuous circle: universities train talent, talent launches start-ups, start-ups feed fresh data back into academia.
What to watch in the next five years
If all stays on schedule, gEICKo should unveil a working prototype by late 2027 and could deploy the first operational unit early in the 2030s, around the same horizon that mega-constellations are forecast to triple satellite traffic. Success would place Portugal among the handful of nations able to perform active debris removal, a credential likely to attract further ESA contracts and private capital. More importantly, it would give the country a stake in writing the rules — technical and ethical — for how humanity shares near-Earth space. For a nation long defined by ocean voyages, charting safer routes above the atmosphere feels like the natural next chapter.