Luca Rossettini's mission to clean up space debris
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What inspired Luca Rossettini to pursue a career in space and how did his early dreams shape his mission?
Hello and welcome to Talk Innovation, the podcast of the European Patent Office. I'm Edward Cook, a patent examiner at DPO and host of the Inspiring Inventors series. In this series we go behind the headlines with the people doing the hard work of innovation. The inventors and entrepreneurs who take an idea from first principles, test it in the real world, and build something that can make a measurable difference. Today's episode is a recording of my conversation with Luca Rossettini. An Italian aerospace engineer and founder of DeOrbit, a company developing space logistics and transportation solutions. Luca and his team were selected as finalists in the SMEs category of the European Inventor Award 2023 for an invention that helps manage satellites in orbit and safely remove them at the end of life.
In our discussion, Luca explains the growing challenge of space debris, how De-Orbit's decommissioning technology is designed to make end-of-life disposable more reliable. And why treating Earth's orbit like an environment we have to protect is becoming increasingly important. We also explore the business case for sustainability in space, the role of space logistics in modern missions, and why intellectual property and patent protection in particular. can be a strategic asset when you're building credibility, partnerships, and long term growth in a fast evolving sector. So whether you're an inventor yourself, a founder, an investor, or simply curious about how breakthrough ideas become practical solutions, there's something here for everyone.
So let's get into my conversation with Luca Rossettini of DORBIT.
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Welcome Luca. Thanks for uh taking the time to join us today.
Thank you. Thank you for having me here. It's really a pleasure and an honor to be here with you.
I mentioned that you were a finalist in the SME's category of the European Inventor Award in twenty twenty three. So how did it feel to receive this recognition, both for your company and for you personally?
Well, at the beginning it was quite surprising. We were not expecting such an award. And uh and you know, especially after the all the sweat and blood that we have to put into the company at the very beginning when space debris was still uh an uh a scientific idea not really perceived uh from the industry as a as a threat. And and I think that recognition allowed us to, you know, to uh to have the the right reward of all the years that we put into the in into the company and to the work that we did. So all the team uh here was really, really happy about that.
Maybe in simple terms you could explain to the audience what problem we're facing in spaces in Earth's orbit, sorry, and uh why it's getting worse if I understand.
Yeah, let's say since the beginning of the space era we we we brought satellites into orbit and objects and we use rockets and uh you know space is very big. So at the beginning no one was really thinking that accumulations of waste in orbit would pose any any problem. But then uh with time we start sending in orbit not one or two satellites per year, but we start sending Dozens, now hundreds, and we are going to send thousands of satellites. So currently we have several thousand satellites that are like active, but all the others uh that are like more numerous, uh, they are actually not working and they are moving at twenty to thirty thousand kilometers per hour, uh, threatening all the other satellites that are actually working.
On top of that, with time, we had. Explosions in orbit, uh, some collisions, and you know, at that speed, you basically explode, so you create a lot of fragments, and we can count only a few dozen thousands of that uh that we can control from Earth. All the others we don't know where they are, and we are talking about hundreds of millions of fragments that could threat the activities in space. We cannot afford to live without the space layer today. Everything that we do on Earth, it's depending on space.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What inspired Luca Rossettini to pursue a career in space and how did his early dreams shape his mission?
0:03–11:07
2
How did Luca’s experience at the European Inventor Award impact D‑Orbit and its team?
11:07–15:51
3
Why is space debris becoming a critical sustainability issue and how fast is the problem growing?
15:51–25:20
4
What led Luca to shift from aspiring astronaut to space‑logistics entrepreneur?
25:20–37:48