- A demonstration mission to test an idea to clean up space debris launched Monday morning local time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Known as ELSA-d, the mission will exhibit technology that could help capture space junk, the millions of pieces of orbital debris that float above Earth.
Moving forward, not looking back. When I read this I was reminded of the intro to the film "Wall-e"
I guess, instead of adding weight and a panel to fit specifically to this commercial "we'll de-orbit your satellite for you" company's satellite towing device... why not require every new satellite to have a de-orbit plan? I mean, yay, private enterprise coming up with a solution to a problem. But isn't the RIGHT solution the one that makes the people responsible for putting the satellite up there in the first place, also responsible for de-orbiting it in a responsible manner? And none of this deals with the existing cloud of crap we have up there, from defunkt KH-11s to paint chips...
So not as versatile as The Klaw but I suppose this method would allow a company to just 'buy' their de-orbit solution -- that must be an attrative proposition for some? Question is can they make adaptors for this interface to match the existing interfaces?
De-orbit the junk cloud with an array of earth-pointing lasers installed on the near side of the moon. I'm sure that sounds craycray, but it's probably the only way we'll reverse the trend.