The goal of the space debris cleanup mission appears to be in smithereens.
A remaining rocket adapter, expected to be removed from low Earth orbit in 2026, has new space junk floating nearby. It’s probably a side effect of crashing into something small flying in space. The problem was spotted by the US Space Force’s 18th Aerospace Defense Squadron, which monitors satellite movements.
This is an unexpected occurrence for the European Space Agency’s ClearSpace-1 mission, a test mission scheduled to remove this transducer in 2026. The transducer is a cone-shaped remnant, about 250 lb (113 kg) in mass, from the 2013 Vega launch that sent a small fleet of satellites into orbit. Space tracking systems have found new objects near the transformer, which were reported to the European Space Agency on August 10. The agency said the objects were likely space debris from a “high-velocity impact of a small, untracked object” that impacted the payload transformer. We may never know if the object that crashed was natural or man-made, since it didn’t show up in the tracking systems.
Related: The mission to clean up space junk will be launched in 2026 aboard an Arianespace rocket
“This fragmentation event underscores the importance of the ClearSpace-1 mission,” ESA officials said. Written in a statement Tuesday (22 August). “The most significant threat posed by large space debris objects is that they break up into clouds of smaller objects, each of which could cause massive damage to active satellites.”
Although it appears that only a small portion of the missile’s hardware was lost after the impact, the mission plan assumed that the hardware was completely intact. Now, assessments are underway to determine what happens next, and screening will continue for weeks at least.
The planned ClearSpace-1 mission is to “rendezvous, capture and remove” the transformer using spacecraft from Swiss startup ClearSpace, according to The latest version From Arianespace’s mission partner. Arianespace’s lightweight Vega-C rocket will carry the cleanup spacecraft into orbit as part of the European Space Agency-funded mission.
The plan calls for a Spider-like ClearSpace vehicle with “legs” to encircle it and then propel it back to Earth with a payload transducer, the structure that connects the spacecraft to its launch vehicle.
With ClearSpace-1 slated for release in three years, it’s time to figure out what to do. But the incident creates more uncertainty for an already difficult task. There are not many ground stations that can see over the orbit of the International Space Station; The original payload transformer was only six feet or two meters in diameter and up to 410 miles (660 km) high.
Fortunately, however, follow-up from the US Space Force and other stations in Germany and Poland revealed that “the primary object remains intact and has not undergone any significant changes in its orbit,” the report said. Fortunately, the risk of these new objects colliding with something else is “minimal”.
It will take time to process human space waste. Nearly 70 years of space exploration has left an impressive number of pieces to work through. European Space Agency estimates This Earth orbit contains at least 36,500 debris objects more than 4 inches (10 cm) across. Including the smallest objects that can be tracked, that number jumps to an incredible 330 million objects larger than 0.04 inch (1 millimeter).
