British invention grabs first piece of space litter

A groundbreaking experiment to capture space debris before it can damage satellites and spacecraft, has succeeded in netting its target. Remotedebris, the world’s most advanced litter-picker, was launched in April and has been docked at the International Space Station (ISS) ahead of testing.

The spacecraft, devised by Surrey University and built by Airbus, is designed to grab space junk then pull it into Earth’s atmosphere, where it burns up. Footage released yesterday showed it had successfully captured an abandoned “cubesat”.