With Earth’s orbit getting increasingly more crowded, companies like Astroscale are developing technology to keep it free of debris.He does so for good reason: There are more than 9,000 satellites orbiting the Earth right now and by 2030 there will be an60,000. And while the earth’s orbit is huge, it’s already home to a lot of junk that can interfere with a $300 billion space economy that provides communications, weather information and global positioning information to the world below.
“When Astroscale started almost 11 years ago,” he said, “I was working for NASA and I was like, ‘Who’s going to make money off of this? Nobody’s thinking about that.” “Every day that’s what we’re thinking about, and the concern about whether it’s already started,” Blackerby told. His company just hit a major milestone on its mission to develop technology that can clear space junk out of orbit into Earth’s atmosphere, where it can burn up safely. On Sunday, the Japan-based company successfully launched its ADRAS-J satellite, a first test of its technology paid for by the Japanese Space Agency to clear out one of its old rockets.
The ADRAS-J is loaded with an array of digital and infrared cameras, lidar and other sensors it will use to assess that abandoned rocket stage. It will take its measurements, determine how fast it’s spinning and evaluate its structural integrity. Astroscale will then use that data to inform a second mission, this time with a spacecraft equipped with robotic arms that will shove the debris towards Earth’s atmosphere where it will harmlessly burn up.