The rise of commercial space travel over the last years lead to mega constellation of communication
satellites. While providing fast access to the internet from any point on earth their position in the low
earth orbit results in a limited lifetime of only a few years. Afterwards the satellites descend back to
earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Due to this increased space traffic, the number of collisions of
satellites with each other or with space debris from earlier space missions will increase. This can lead
up to a point where scientific research and commercial space travel are not feasible anymore.
Cleaning the space debris in the low earth orbit is quite challenging due to the wide range of particle
sizes ranging from meter down to sub millimeter scale. Especially in the range between 1 cm and 10
cm it is impossible to shield spacecrafts from these particles. Ground-bound radar detection is limited
to meter-sized objects

C.LEO.PATRA opens a path to detect and remove space debris in particular for cm-sized objects. A
novel space based high intensity laser system allows to detect space debris up to 100 km away and
then subsequently evaporates the debris within its field of view. The coherent combination of ultra
short high power laser systems makes this possible.