A Japanese mission to stalk, capture, and hurl space junk into the atmosphere is progressing rather nicely. The orbital garbage truck recently completed the rendezvous phase, parking next to a second stage rocket that’s been aimlessly zipping around Earth orbit since 2009.
As more rockets liftoff into the skies, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is trying to control how long those launch vehicles stay in orbit as floating space junk.
In a sad case of debris-on-debris crime, a defunct payload adapter that was chosen as the subject of a space debris cleanup mission was itself hit by a piece of space junk.
A groundbreaking demonstration by the European Space Agency (ESA) suggests it’s possible to deorbit satellites safely and in a reasonably controlled manner, even for those not originally designed for such maneuvers.
