Published on February 19, 2024 at 09:13.
A Japanese company announced Monday the successful launch of what it believes will be the first spacecraft tasked with studying the ever-increasing and potentially hazardous waste in orbit. The mission of Astroscale-Japan's Active Debris Removal (Adras-J) is to find and examine the remains of a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been floating in space for 15 years, private Japanese company Astroscale said. The probe was launched from New Zealand at 3:52 a.m. on the night of Sunday to Monday (Sunday at 3:52 p.m. in Switzerland). Astroscale “has successfully established contact (…) and is ready to start operations,” project manager Eijiro Atarashi is quoted as saying in a press release.
The exact orbital position of the upper stage of the H-IIA rocket, launched by the Japanese Space Agency (Jaxa) in 2009 and the size of a bus, is not known. However, its estimated location is determined based on observation data from Earth. Adras-J will approach “from a safe distance” and then collect footage to assess the structure’s movements and condition. This spacecraft was selected for the first phase of a Jaxa program aimed at removing large debris of Japanese origin in collaboration with the private sector.
Read more: ClearSpace approaches mission to clean up space debris
A million dangerous pieces of debris
Waste such as spent satellites, rocket parts and collision debris has been piling up since the beginning of the space age, and the problem has only gotten worse in recent decades. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates that there are around a million pieces of satellite or rocket debris in orbit larger than a centimeter, large enough to “disable a spacecraft.”
To clean up space, one possible solution could be to use a laser beam that can propel the debris into a new orbit, where a “space destroyer” would collect it via a magnet. On Saturday, Japan successfully launched its new heavy H3 launch vehicle, after two initial failures last year. And at the end of January, the archipelago became the fifth country to successfully land on the moon with its uninhabited Slim probe.
Also read: Luc Piguet: “Even small space debris can be very dangerous at speeds of 28,000 km/h”