A Japanese mission drive at crystallise up distance debris has hit its first milestone , successfully manoeuver tight to a piece of space trash it was pass over and returning a photo to Earth .
Space around our satellite is get quite full . We are a messy species , and low - Earth reach is apparently no exception to our " we ’ll scavenge up by and by " ruler . One concern about the detritus is that it could cause the " Kessler Effect " ( orKessler Syndrome ) .
Simply put , the Kessler Effect is where a exclusive result ( such as an plosion of a satellite ) in low - Earth orbit creates a chain response , as debris destroys other objects in domain . Should this happen , the debris could keep colliding with other objects , potentially causing communication problem and leaving areas of blank inaccessible to spacecraft .
Essentially , it could terminate up like the filmGravity , but with less George Clooney doing great eyebrow workplace and more " Hey what happened to my GPS " . At worst , some ruminate it could essentially trap us here on Earth , ineffectual to leave .
But this is n’t some far - flung problem to deal with in the future . NASA has had to performseveralemergencymaneuversto move the International Space Station out of the way of life of rubble . Several space agency and individual fellowship are working on solutions to the problem , let in theActive Debris Removal missionby Astroscale - Japan , or ADRAS - J.
launch in February , the first stage of its mission was to perform a series of maneuvers to bring it close to a art object of space debris ; a JapaneseH2A upper stage rocket physical structure , measuring approximately 11 meters ( 36 feet ) in duration .
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This was no easy task , as blank space junk is generally not prepared to make it easy to tell apart visually , nor provide its own position via GPS information .
" The condition of the social system of the client is also unknown , " Astroscale - Japan added in astatementahead of the mission . " In plus , the attitude and ALT of the client can not be controlled , and the client can not be communicated with . "
The mission has now get up with the debris it was tracking , and photographed it from several hundred meters away . The mission will attempt to orbit around the upper stage rocket salad , taking further images to assess its structure . A second mission – ADRAS - J2 – will approach the same piece of detritus and obtain further icon , before attempting to safelyremove it from orbitusing a robotic limb .
