Space Junk
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Given how many satellites and bits of orbital debris are now orbiting the Earth, it's becoming increasingly important to keep track of where they all are. A new telescope system allows space agencies and other clients to do so – even in broad daylight.
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A team of ESA scientists has developed a way to use lasers, special telescopes, detectors, and light filters tuned to specific wavelengths to increase contrast with the sky and accurately track space debris even in broad daylight.
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Space debris is a serious problem that won’t be going away anytime soon, but researchers have put forward a novel way to keep things in check, making a case for charging satellite operators an “orbital-use fee” to reduce the risk of collisions.
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DirecTV has been granted permission by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to send a damaged communications satellite in danger of exploding due to its severely damaged batteries into an emergency disposal trajectory.
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ESA has commissioned the world's first mission to recover a piece of space debris in orbit. At the end of November, the Ministerial Council consortium awarded a service contract to a consortium for the ClearSpace-1 mission to launch in 2025.
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Astronomers go to great lengths to find the quietest, darkest corners of the night sky, but a new breed of satellites like those of SpaceX's Starlink project threaten to ruin the views in very damaging ways. And the problems don't end there.
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A rare authentic full-scale working test model of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik-1, is up for auction.
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In order to address the problem of space debris, some groups are looking into methods of de-orbiting satellites once their operational lives have ended. One of the latest approaches involves getting the spacecraft to dispense a long strip of tape, instead of using their own propellant.
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Remember the garbage-collecting Oscar the Grouch, from Sesame Street? Well, an orbital-debris-gathering spacecraft now bears his name. Known as OSCaR ("Obsolete Spacecraft Capture and Removal"), the semi-autonomous craft is currently being developed at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Dutch artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde has a knack for raising environmental awareness through spectacular and symbolic pieces of art, and his freshly launched Space Waste Lab might be his most impressive installation yet.
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Technology designed to clean up space has captured its first bit of simulated space debris in orbit. Part of the RemoveDEBRIS mission, a balloon acted as a target for the RemoveDEBRIS satellite, which fired a weighted net from a range of seven meters (23 ft) and successfully snared the "debris."
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An ESA-funded scientist is developing a magnetic space tug to combat the growing problem of space debris. Using cryogenic magnets, the tugs could lock onto derelict satellites and deorbit them before they become a hazard to navigation.
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