Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The European Space Agency has announced plans to launch a space claw, which latches on to pieces of space junk, then drags the junk into a fiery death in Earth’s atmosphere. My question – what is the difference between something which can destroy space junk, and a satellite killer?
European Space Agency will launch giant claw that drags space junk to its doom
No, really. It’s signed a contract to make this happen in the year 2025
Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Fri 27 Nov 2020 // 04:01 UTC
The European Space Agency has formalised its plan to dispose of space junk by using an orbiting claw to grab an old bit of rocket before dragging both the claw and the junk to a fiery doom.
The agency announced the plan in late 2019 when it revealed it had asked Swiss startup ClearSpace to fully scope the mission.
The paperwork was due in March and found favour with the ESA’s Ministerial Council, which has approved funding for an €86 million contract to fund the mission.
The goal remains the same: fly ClearSpace’s junk-grabbing claw to intercept a VESPA (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter) that’s orbited since a 2013 launch of an ESA Vega rocket.
…
Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/27/esa_clearspace_space_junk_cleanup_mission/
The ESA official announcement is available here.
Obviously I am not suggesting the ESA has hostile intentions towards US space assets, but there is always a possibility that another less friendly party will hack their system, steal their technology, or develop their own version.
Luckily the USA has a space force, to evaluate and protect US space assets from potential threats.
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Where is Waste Management when you need them?
The question posed in the headline is a fair one, but….
.. But haven’t the Chinese been testing anti-satellite launches for many years now?
Sure, there’s supposed to be some sort of agreements against deploying such systems, but, well, it doesn’t do any harm to develop systems that could be switched to military purposes at short notice, right? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
And it’s not like all anti nuclear-proliferation agreements have been rigidly adhered to by nations like Iran, Korea etc. We can be sure that other nations are not making a public song and dance about their activities.
It’s a rum bloody do when I am pleased at the thought of resources being directed to military activities rather than being wasted at “saving the planet”.
Having read through this, I note that no one so far seems to have mentioned or know of
http://stuffin.space/
It may take a little time to learn how to grasp the controls for the interface … persevere.
You can zoom in and out (with a mouse scroll wheel) and or left click grab and rotate, try it out.
Look at About and Help, top right. Move the muse around, scroll in and out, get used to it.
You can also search, the Starlink satellites, for instance:
http://stuffin.space/?search=starlink
The Claw!
https://youtu.be/ziabczJ9Iys