If space is going to remain useful, it needs to be tidied up every once in a while. Debris is a persistent hazard in orbit, and every new satellite might end up as further debris. People are still figuring out how to clear that debris, and this week saw an exciting new approach. It\u2019s a harpoon!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The harpoon is just one of four experiments in the RemoveDEBRIS mission<\/a>. Funded in part by the European Commission and headed by the Surrey Space Centre, the platform was deployed to ISS in 2018. Once readied for its mission, it then set out to test ways to clear debris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first of these methods involved launching a smaller cubesat from the RemoveDEBRIS satellite, and then catching that smaller cubesat with a special net. The cubesat is then deorbited, letting the heat of atmospheric reentry obliterate the cubesat and net. Tested in September 2018<\/a>, the net appears to have been a success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A month later, in October 2018, the RemoveDEBRIS satellite released another cubesat. This time, the cubesat was already on a predetermined path towards atmospheric reentry. That test focused on tracking the descending cubesat<\/a> with a camera and LiDAR. Getting accurate images of space debris to train removal tools on is hard. When Stanford and the European Space Agency announced a competition to design an AI that can hunt space debris<\/a>, they provided contestants with a library of artificially generated images of space junk to work from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n