Astroscale, a Japanese-based company that wants to clean up space debris from orbit, has announced that it has begun construction of a prototype spacecraft that will test some of its innovative space junk removal technologies in orbit.
"We are excited to be taking this next step in building our groundbreaking mission," said Seita Iizuka, Project Manager for the mission, in a."ELSA-d is an incredibly complex satellite as we will be demonstrating rendezvous and proximity operations technologies that have never before been tested in space."
In the next test the client spacecraft will be spun out of control. The service spacecraft will match the rotation of the client – think along the lines of the Interstellar docking scene – and then attach to it again with the magnetic plate.
That actually sounds concerning all of our GPS systems rely on satellites 🛰 in orbit. First responders rely on GPS to find injured and stranded people.
That’s in interesting
Hi all, The Great Thing of Japanese one rocket star ship! Sincerely from Oxygen Johnny Hansson in Malmo and in Sweden.
The space is getting crowded , require a clean up. I was not aware of 5000 satellites being in orbit currently.
Why spacecraft remove satellites?
How will they be able to tell the difference between space junk and SpaceX’s Starlink....
Cleaning up space? Very interesting