More and more countries understand the importance of more conscious management of space debris.
The constant increase of this debris in Earth’s orbit is a problem for everyoneboth for us who live on Earth and do not have any space travel planned, but above all for the instruments present in the space around us.
For this reason, Japan launched the Adras-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) mission with the objective of identify and approach an ancient debris that has been orbiting our planet for 15 years.
Where did this rocket come from?
On February 18, the Japanese satellite was launched Astroscale on a Lab Electron rocket. The launch was carried out from the Mahia base, New Zealand.
Since then, Astroscale has gradually approached a segment of a rocket out of service about 11 meters long and 4 meters wide, with a mass of 3 tons.
This rest of the rocket is also Japanese and comes from the H-IIA launch vehicle that in 2009 had put JAXA’s Gosat (Greenhouse Gas Observing SAtellite) satellite into orbit, a satellite whose objective is to observe and study greenhouse gases such as CO2.
Evidently This is not the only space debris that wanders around our planet; In fact, the European Space Agency (ESA) has counted 2,220 rocket bodies still in orbit.
To make the precise approach, the Astroscale smart satellite used cameras and algorithms that They allowed him to approach the rocket fragment without colliding with itan operation that is not at all obvious, also because in the meantime the remains slowly rotate on themselves.
In the coming weeks the Adras-J satellite will continue orbiting the body of the rocket trying to capture as many images as possible to gather more information about the fragment, such as the conditions of its structure, its rotation speed and its axis of rotation.
More missions will follow to capture the fragment
Therefore, for the moment it will be limited to observe the rocket very closely without coming into direct contact with it; in fact, Adras-J will try to slow the rocket’s rotation by launching propellants against it in the opposite direction to its rotation.
As far as future Astroscale missions are concerned, their goal will be to get even closer to collect debris using robotic arms.
New advances in forecasting the “fall” of space debris
Japan is not only planning missions to recover and therefore reduce the amount of space debris present in space, in fact There are many space agencies that have developed well-structured and articulated programs to solve this problem.. Also because any collision with debris would cause the production of more debris and, therefore, a series of cascading collisions.
There is still much to do, but it is now clear to everyone that it is a priority to ensure that we continue to explore the space around us, but also maintain and continue to grow the connections and infrastructure on our planet.
