Japanese firm wants to start removing 750,000 pieces of junk circling Earth

TOKYO — As the satellite industry booms, a Japanese company is working to prevent space-debris collisions that could paralyze transportation, defence and telecommunications systems.

Astroscale Holdings Inc. is preparing to rendezvous with, capture and dock a test satellite early next year to show how its technology can help clear orbiting junk, Miki Ito, 36, Astroscale’s general manager, said Saturday.

Astroscale is competing in a niche that has drawn urgent attention and funding from companies and governments including those in the U.S., Japan, Singapore and the U.K.

Astroscale said its mission will be the world’s first in-orbit debris capture and removal demonstration using its rendezvous and magnetic capture mechanisms. In the test run, “chaser” and “target” modules will rocket into orbit, then separate.

The chaser then will try to capture the target once in a steady state and again when it is tumbling. Once safely docked, the chaser and target will power back toward Earth, burning up on re-entry into the atmosphere.

Given the difficulty of fixing satellites in orbit, there is usually no choice but to bring malfunctioning craft down, said Ito, who worked on microsatellite projects at the Next Generation Space System Technology Research Association before becoming president of Astroscale Japan, then general manager.

With an estimated 750,000 bits of old satellites and rockets circling the Earth at about 18,000 miles an hour (eight kilometres a second), a collision could instantly shatter a multimillion dollar satellite. Worse, a chain reaction of destruction could render entire bands of low-earth orbit unnavigable for satellites.

There have been some close calls already. In 2009, the U.S.-launched Iridium33 satellite collided with Russia’s Kosmos-2251, sending thousands of new bits of debris hurtling through space. The crash didn’t trigger other collisions, but the junk is still up there.

While governments have said they are concerned about the threat, the focus has been on funding private efforts to design a workable solution. Efforts include a joint effort by Japan’s space agency and a more than 100-year-old maker of fishing nets to develop a wire mesh that could fling debris out of harm’s way. Other efforts include spacecraft that sweep, lasso and harpoon debris.