On Monday, March 22, representatives of Roskosmos announced the successful launch of the Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle – it launched 38 spacecraft into low-earth orbit, among which was the ELSA-d satellite from the Japanese company Astroscale. This device was created specifically for the removal of debris from the orbit of our planet, which, according to the researchers, has accumulated there in abundance. Also, together with this satellite, a demonstrator satellite was launched into orbit, which will act as space debris – it is on this satellite that the manufacturer plans to demonstrate the process of cleaning the orbit.
The design of the ELSA-d satellite provides a special magnetic capture that can catch both stabilized objects in open space and objects that rotate randomly. At the same time, of course, the “cleaner” can de-orbit these objects, gradually clearing space from various objects that interfere with both communications satellites and cargo or even manned spacecraft. At the moment, according to experts, in the orbit of our planet there are about 8 thousand metric tons of space debris – about 500 thousand different objects of all shapes and sizes.
It is for this reason that Astroscale are planning to test their satellite within a few months, demonstrating the effectiveness of docking with an additional satellite, playing the role of debris, in outer space. In the future, the company plans to provide its services for cleaning the Earth’s orbit from various debris – for satellite operators, as well as giants like SpaceX and Amazon, who want to deploy satellite networks in low-Earth orbit, this is a very tempting offer. However, so far we are talking about cleaning only small objects – the Japanese cannot take away spent satellites from space.
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