" The Sky IS Falling" ll (prev topic locked)

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The ESA is spending $100 million to clean up one piece of space junk

https://bgr.com/2020/11/29/space-junk-cleanup-esa-clearspace/


According to a news release by the ESA, the agency has signed a massive contract with a Swiss startup called ClearSpace SA. The company has been awarded €86 million — which is roughly $102 million USD — for the purposes of removing a single large piece of space junk from Earth orbit. The mission, which will be ClearSpace-1, will launch in 2025 and attempt to bring down a Vespa payload adapter.

Space junk is a huge problem that is growing bigger by the day. Discarded rocket components, bits and pieces of old, defunct satellites, and even abandoned space stations (looking at you, China) have cluttered the area around Earth in greater density than ever before. Now, as a new initiative by the European Space Agency suggests, cleaning up that trash is going to be a complicated and apparently very, very costly task.