21st Century Innovative Technologies and Developments as also discoveries, curiosity ( insolite)...

Das Startup Clearspace hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, den Weltraum von Trümmerteilen zu befreien. Jetzt hat das 2018 gegründete Unternehmen aus der Schweiz seine erste offizielle Mission angekündigt. Diese soll in der zweiten Hälfte des Jahres 2026 starten und wird von der Europäischen Raumfahrtagentur (Esa) finanziert. Im Zuge der Mission Clearspace‑1 wird ein Raumschiff ein Stück Weltraumschrott begleiten und anschließend entsorgen.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Space

https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Space+Junk

Die Menschheit hat das All zugemüllt - und kommt beim Aufräumen nicht voran. Experten haben Ideen, was zu tun wäre. Wer aber zahlt? Wer kümmert sich um juristische Fragen? Neue Missionen drohen die Probleme noch zu verschärfen.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Space+Junk

What goes up, may come down in pieces—and cause some trouble in the process.

As hardware prices and launch costs fall, there’s an increasing trend to launch swarms of satellites into space to monitor our planet and transmit data. But some academics are concerned that the rising numbers may make an existing space junk problem far worse.

At the end of 2016, it was estimated that 1,459 operating satellites were in orbit around Earth. But that number looks set to rise quickly, as companies continue to launch swarms of smaller spacecraft. Earlier this year, for instance, Planet Labs popped 88 of its tiny satellites into space to photograph the planet below.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Space+Junk

Watch a harpoon successfully spear a piece of space junk
This is the third in a series of successful space-trash cleanup tests by the RemoveDEBRIS spacecraft.

Gotcha: The RemoveDEBRIS satellite, created by a team at the University of Surrey, has pulled off its most demanding experiment yet. It fired a harpoon at 20 meters a second at a separate satellite panel that it was holding at the end of a boom. As you can see in the video above, the harpoon succeeded in stabbing and capturing the item. Last year the team also accurately fired a giant net at a satellite to capture it, and tested out a lidar- and camera-based system for identifying space junk.

The space landfill: Earth’s orbit is full of trash. Right now there are more than 7,600 tons of space junk floating around our planet. And that’s a problem, because the more things we send up there, the greater the chances they crash into each other. That creates many more, smaller bits of junk, which would pose serious danger to future space missions (while overly dramatized, see the movie Gravity).

Cleaning up the mess: The final test by RemoveDEBRIS in March will be an act of self-sacrifice. The satellite will inflate a sail designed to carry itself into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up. If more satellites clean up after themselves when their job is done, we can prevent more junk piling up in orbit.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Space

https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Space+Junk

More than 750,000 pieces of dangerous debris are now orbiting Earth and threatening the future of spaceflight, the largest ever conference on space rubbish has heard.

The European Space Agency (ESA) appealed to satellite operators and space agencies to clear up their retired crafts, many of which could impact launches, and are in danger of hitting the International Space Station.

“Only about 60 per cent of the satellites that should be disposed of at the end of their missions under current guidelines are, in fact, properly managed,”  Dr Holger Krag, head of ESA’s debris office told the European Conference on Space Debris in Germany.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Space+Junk