It won鈥檛 be long now. In just a few short months, the long-standing debate鈥攕pace harpoon versus giant butterfly net鈥攚ill finally be settled by a good old-fashioned space trash collection contest. We鈥檝e got ourselves a barn-burner here, folks.
Surrey Space Centre announced that their space trash collection mission, RemoveDEBRIS, is now set to launch by early next year. There are already plenty of technologies in the works to clean up the more than 7,000 tons of trash that orbit the Earth, posing a collision hazard to both satellites and spacecraft. But the RemoveDEBRIS mission is the first time that a selection of those methods will get a test in space to see just how they stack up against each other in the contest to scoop up the most trash.
In one corner, we have Space Net, which is essentially a big net designed to capture both big and little pieces of drifting garbage. In the other corner, we have Space Harpoon, which (just like it sounds) is a harpoon that will spear individual pieces of space trash and reel them back in.
There鈥檚 also a third option, in which future satellites are given a drag sail, making them more likely to burn up in our atmosphere than join the Great Space Garbage Patch. But, come on, we鈥檙e talking space harpoons and giant nets here, so we鈥檙e going to spend a little less time worrying about adding drag-sails to future satellites and a little more time watching a space harpoon spear a piece of space garbage.
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