Space junk is a serious problem, we have been accumulating space debris orbiting our planet since day one of our space adventures but nobody has ever bothered to try to clean the mess. 17’000 pieces of space junk are currently being monitored by NASA which consists of dead satellites, spent rocket stages and parts and broken spacecraft. As the amount of junk increases it becomes more and more dangerous to have astronauts in space. Each debris is travelling at high speeds around 28,000 km/h and even when the piece of junk is the size of a coin, it can destroy an entire space station. A swiss company is now launching a satellite that will try to clean some of it. The CleanSpace One, after launch will match the speed of the target debris, take a hold of it and lunch itself into the atmosphere with the space junk. Yes it is a suicide mission but lets hope they make CleanSpace 17000 to end the mess in space. I would have called it KamikaziClean One…
Via Gizmag
