Space Debris

Engineers are set to test a device that could pull defunct spacecraft and used rocket parts back to Earth, allowing them to burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere. Researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, are launching a prototype drag sail Thursday aboard a rocket made by Firefly Aerospace,…

Space | Analysis 2 September 2021 By Jonathan O’Callaghan The growing space junk problem could get worse with anti-satellite weapons Frame Stock Footage/Shutterstock Today there are an estimated 18,000 pieces of trackable space junk in Earth’s orbit, which includes anything larger than a tennis ball. The largest group of these…

WHEN AMATEUR IRISH astronomer John Flannery first took an interest in the hobby as a child, space was a much cleaner place than it is in 2021. Thanks to human activity, there are now hundreds of thousands of man-made objects ranging from satellites — some ‘live’ and some ‘dead’ —…

Illustration of ClearSpace-1, a planned active debris removal mission. Credit: ClearSpace SA Less than a year on from the UK Space Agency committing £1 million in funding to combat space debris, Fujitsu UK has successfully combined quantum-inspired computing and Artificial Intelligence to support the transformation of space debris removal. Fujitsu’s…

Astroscale hit a major milestone Wednesday, when its space junk removal demo satellite that’s currently in orbit successfully captured and released a client spacecraft using a magnetic system. The End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission was launched in March, with the goal of validating the company’s orbital debris removal tech.…

Home News Spaceflight An artist's illustration of Aurora Propulsion Technologies' AuroraSat-1, a cubesat designed to demonstrate several space junk cleanup technologies. AuroraSat-1 is scheduled to launch atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster in late 2021. (Image credit: Aurora Propulsion Technologies/Rocket Lab) Technology that could ease humanity's space junk problem is…

Space debris removal is not just an environmental concern. It makes money for all parties involved. Today’s digital infrastructure is being built in low Earth orbit. Satellite constellations from companies like SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat, AST Space Mobile and many others are rapidly deploying to provide everything from internet to cell…

Home News Science & Astronomy The problem of "space junk" continues to grow. (Image credit: Miguel Soares/Wikimedia Commons) Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of "Ask a Spaceman" and "Space Radio," and author of "How to Die in Space." Sutter contributed…

by Sandra Erwin — July 27, 2021 The main cause of in-orbit explosions is related to residual fuel that remains in tanks or fuel lines once a rocket stage or satellite is discarded in Earth orbit. Credit: ESA Astroscale: 'We are considering future opportunities that could include joint technology development…

The Oort cloud represents the very edges of our solar system. The thinly dispersed collection of icy material starts roughly 200 times farther away from the sun than Pluto and stretches halfway to our sun’s nearest starry neighbor, Alpha Centauri. We know so little about it that its very existence…