The Swiss space agency of the EPFL has his plans revealed to contribute to the clean up of the growing amount of space debris. A satellite with a manipulator must on legacy satellites to hunt.
The project that the Swiss suggested by institute of technology École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Swiss ruimteorganisatie part, CleanSpace One called. In the first instance, would be a satellite that has a different, outdated, satellite detection and handling and then jointly in the atmosphere to burn. Later versions would provide a satellite, which captured satellites intact to the earth can bring them back.
The first target of CleanSpace One would be the Swisscube, the first satellite of Switzerland from 2009, or Tlsat-satellite from 2010. Before that it would be 2015 or 2016 and there would be around eight million euros in the project to be invested. With that investment should be a number of issues, for example, about the technique of the pick mechanism and motors for course corrections, to be fixed. For the first would be the nature be looked at, while for propulsion to ionenmotors is thought.
The problem of flying space debris is becoming greater, says the Swiss. Currently following the NASA all about sixteen thousand pieces of waste with a diameter of more than ten centimeters and smaller debris is much more numerous. Collisions with operational satellites pose a real problem, such as when in February 2009, an American satellite on an old Russian satellite collided. With more and more satellietlanceringen is the chance of that growing.
