A demonstration mission to test an idea to clean up space debris ( 碎片 ) was launched Monday morning local time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. ELSA-d, which stands for End-of-Life Services by Astroscale, will be carried out by a "servicer satellite" and a "client satellite" ( 客户卫星) that launched together. The mission will exhibit technology that could help capture space junk, the millions of pieces of orbital debris that float above Earth. The more than 8,000 metric tons of debris threaten the loss of services we rely on for earth-bound life, including weather forecasting, telecommunications and GPS systems. The spacecraft works by attempting to attach itself to dead satellites and pushing them toward Earth to burn up in the atmosphere. The mission, which will be run from the U. K. , will carry out this catch and release process repeatedly over the course of six months.
Space junk has been a growing problem for years as human-made objects such as old satellites and spacecraft parts build up in low Earth orbit until they decay, deorbit, explode or crash with other objects, breaking into smaller pieces of waste. According to a recent report by NASA, at least 26,000 of the millions of pieces of space junk are orbiting along at 17,500 mph, and they could "destroy a satellite on impact". More than 500,000 pieces are a "mission-ending threat" because of their ability to impact protective systems, fuel tanks and spacecraft cabins.
The development of other cleanup technologies has been in progress for years. In 2016, Japan's space agency sent a 700-meter chain into space to try to slow down and redirect space junk. In 2018, a device called Remove Debris successfully cast a net around a copy satellite. The European Space Agency also plans to send a self-destructing robot into orbit in 2025, which the organization's former director general has referred to as a space "vacuum cleaner".
These efforts could prove increasingly important as private space ventures like Space X continue to fill low Earth orbit with a huge number of satellites in a mess.
