European governments have long treated the area around their satellites as something to watch more than something to defend. This week suggested a shift. Within a few days, the European Defence Fund put money behind a French-led study into capturing and manipulating hostile spacecraft, the UK Ministry of Defence signed a prime contract for a new on-orbit defence programme, and a British startup put together a coalition to pitch a space-based "carrier strike" force.

None of these is a weapon in orbit yet. Taken together, though, they show European defence money and industry attention moving toward building the means to respond to threats in space.

The Trigger: 50 Metres Over Ukraine

All three announcements share the same context. Earlier this month a Russian satellite came within about 50 m of an ICEYE satellite working over Ukraine, according to Payload. Payload said it was not clear what the Russians were doing so close, but that the episode highlighted how unequipped Europeans are to respond to similar threats in orbit. In orbital terms 50 m is very close.

Industry calls this kind of manoeuvre rendezvous and proximity operations, or RPO. The new contracts and studies are early attempts to give Europe options for responding to it.

OSMOS X and the EDF's Capture Consortium

The first of the three developments is the European Defence Fund's backing of French startup OSMOS X. The company will lead a 30-month study funded with about 4.5 million euro (roughly $5 million), Payload reports. The consortium has seven organisations, among them France's ArcSpace and CNRS, Germany's KINETIK Space, Poznan University of Technology in Poland and Politecnico di Milano in Italy.

The stated goal goes well beyond inspection. The team is working toward a spacecraft that could approach, capture and manipulate an adversary spacecraft, including through in-space welding, in order to deal with the threat without causing debris. OSMOS X CEO Arnaud Masson described attaching items such as jammers or propulsion systems to non-cooperative spacecraft, breaking their ability to spy on allied satellites or forcing them into non-threatening orbits. The no-debris requirement matters a great deal. A kinetic intercept that breaks a satellite into fragments threatens everyone's orbit, the attacker's included. Grabbing and disabling a target, or pushing it somewhere harmless, avoids that.

The hardware is still a long way off. The final deliverable of the study is a preliminary design review, and the coalition will not initially send anything to space. OSMOS X, which has yet to fly in space, expects its own first demonstration mission before the end of next year, where it will validate its high-power propulsion system.

The study's budget is small next to the fund that pays for it. The European Commission's DG DEFIS lists an EDF budget of nearly 7.3 billion euro for 2021 to 2027, with 2.7 billion allocated to collaborative defence research and 5.3 billion to collaborative capability development. Grants can cover up to 100 percent of eligible costs, with bonuses for SMEs, mid-caps and projects linked to PESCO, the EU's permanent structured cooperation framework on defence. The 2026 Annual Work Programme, adopted on 17 December 2025, earmarks 1 billion euro for collaborative defence R&D. A 4.5 million euro study is a small slice of the fund as a whole, but early projects like it can shape later, larger ones.

Britain's LEDA: A Prime Contract for Astroscale

Across the Channel, the UK MoD awarded Astroscale's UK subsidiary a 15 million pound (about 18 million euro) contract as prime contractor for a new defence programme called LEDA. BAE Systems and Open Cosmos are key partners, according to Astroscale's 28 October announcement.

The contract sits inside a bigger budget line. The UK Defence Investment Plan allocates 3.2 billion pounds to space through 2030 and describes space as "the central nervous system of modern, high-intensity warfare."

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Astroscale arrives with relevant flight experience. Its ELSA-d mission demonstrated rendezvous and magnetic capture of a client spacecraft, and in 2024 ADRAS-J approached and inspected a non-cooperative rocket body from less than 15 m away. The company also points to its upcoming ELSA-M mission, which it says will be the world's first active debris removal mission involving a commercial satellite. These are the core skills of on-orbit servicing (approaching, inspecting and working alongside an object in orbit), and they carry over naturally to defence work.

But a derelict rocket stage is not an opponent. As Payload notes, Astroscale showed docking with an uncooperative client in 2021 on ELSA-d, but keeping pace with an adversarial spacecraft that can actively manoeuvre away is, in Godfrey's words as reported, another mission entirely.

Alex Godfrey, Astroscale UK's director of defence, said LEDA is "going to form part of the permanent pathway to the UK's understanding of orbital warfare," including how to counter RPO threats. He said the military will also need operators, and that "we do need to create the Top Gun school for space control." He added that space-to-space conflict will likely behave more like chess than a dogfight. Godfrey declined to share the specific capabilities LEDA is building, so what it will actually deliver remains unclear.

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The Startups Lobbying for More

The next development is a pitch, not a contract. UK-based Shield Space has launched a coalition of UK space companies to pitch the MoD on a space-based carrier-strike platform, Payload reports. Shield Space CEO Graeme Ritchie told Payload the UK military should acquire spacecraft with a range of "effectors," from non-kinetic capabilities to anti-satellite weapons.

Separately, Lithuanian company Blackswan Space published an open letter, originally sent in September, to UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Liz Lloyd calling for greater funding of space control capabilities. Together with the LEDA award, the letter shows industry in the UK and elsewhere in Europe pressing governments to spend more on the area.

Why It Matters

Payload describes the week's announcements as a definitive shift in tone from European militaries and companies, who have grown comfortable talking about deterrence through physical action in orbit. The OSMOS X study, LEDA and the Shield Space coalition point to a phase in which governments pay for the ability to act, not only to observe. That could mean inspecting a suspicious neighbour, deterring it, or physically dealing with it.

Three points stand out. First, avoiding debris is a stated design goal. The EDF-backed study explicitly aims to deal with hostile craft without creating debris, which matters because fragments endanger the operator's own orbital neighbourhood too.

Second, the debris-removal and servicing industry is becoming relevant to defence. Astroscale's announcement presents the LEDA award as building on its flight-proven heritage of approaching, inspecting and working safely alongside other objects in orbit.

Third, the sums are still modest compared with the problem. A preliminary design review and a 15 million pound programme will not by themselves stop a Russian satellite from coming within 50 m of a commercial imager. They do give European governments engineers, partners and flight data to build on. In a field where Godfrey compares the contest to chess, that is the early part of the game.

What to watch next: whether OSMOS X flies its demonstrator before the end of next year as planned, how LEDA's work is divided among Astroscale, BAE Systems and Open Cosmos, and whether the UK MoD takes up the Shield Space and Blackswan pitches with money of its own.

Sources