Startup Successfully Docks With Flying Space Junk To Start Cleaning The Cosmos

There's a small crisis emerging in outer space, as the skies above our planet are slowly filling with floating space trash and experts are rushing to find a way to clear away the worst of it. Now, a team from Japan has successfully approached an abandoned rocket orbiting above the Earth, to test a new way of clearing our skies.

The test was carried out by Japanese startup Astroscale, which has been developing a novel way of clearing some of the estimated 22,000 pieces of space trash that are floating above us right now.

Astroscale has developed a small craft that will one day be able to dock with errant space junk and then control its descent back to Earth, the company explained recently. When the space trash floats back to Earth, it can either be safely crashed into the ocean or could burn up in the atmosphere upon reentry.

The latest mission was a test of Astroscale's garbage cleaning craft, reports Ars Technica. The catchily-named Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan mission (ADRAS-J for short) launched a spacecraft to a derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. The craft lineup up the old rocket stage in its sights and then pulled close to it, getting within 50 feet of the Japanese rocket.

The milestone means that Astroscale has unlocked a new round of funding from Japan's space agency, which will allow it to move on to finally docking with a chunk of space junk, as Ars Technica explains:

It will be up to a future Astroscale mission, named ADRAS-J2, to transit the last 15 meters to the H-IIA rocket. ADRAS-J was a pathfinder, and didn't have the equipment to actually latch on to another object in orbit. Last year, Japan's space agency awarded Astroscale a contract worth $88 million (13.2 billion yen) to build and launch ADRAS-J2 to rendezvous and use a robotic arm to attach itself to the same H-IIA rocket, then steer the discarded upper stage back into the atmosphere for a destructive reentry.

Astroscale's next test could remove one of 2,000 spent rocket bodies that are currently orbiting above our planet.

With another $88 million to play with, Astroscale is now preparing for the final approach and eventual docking with a floating chunk of space junk. This mission will launch in 2027 and will bring the H-IIA rocket back for an explosive end in the Earth's atmosphere, bringing the number of spent rocket bodies floating in space to 1,999. Success!

If that test proves successful, it will pave the way for the Japanese company to begin clearing space. Astroscale already has subsidiaries in the U.S., U.K., and France to begin clearing each country's defunct space junk from orbit.

Its biggest test could come when Astroscale works to de-orbit a defunct European satellite in OneWeb's broadband megaconstellation. That test will rely on a magnetic plate to connect the Astroscale craft with the satellite, which will then be brought back to Earth where it could burn up in the atmosphere like other car-sized satellites have, or will be crashed into the ocean.

It's estimated that as well as the 2,000 spent rocket bodies floating above the Earth, there are another 32,000 pieces of space junk that are larger than four inches across. The task of removing all this trash from space will be no mean feat, and it definitely won't be a job that comes cheap.

Astroscale's contract to de-orbit Europe's defunct satellite is worth around $35 million, and its latest funding boost in Japan has awarded the firm more than $80 million to remove a single rocket body from orbit. As such, the cost of clearing everything is sure to be stratospheric.

In fact, NASA estimates put the cost of removing a single piece of space junk at around $8 million once a tried and tested method has been developed. As the risk all this trash poses to other, fully-functioning satellites and space craft increases, however, the benefits of clearing low Earth orbit could soon outweigh that sky-high cost.