Space junk harpooned like whale in orbit-cleanup test

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A “harpoon” flung from a satellite has successfully captured a piece of pretend space junk.

The British-led experiment is part of an effort to clean up debris in orbit, hundreds of miles above Earth.

The University of Surrey’s Guglielmo Aglietti said Friday that the steel-tipped harpoon scored a bull’s-eye Feb. 8. The harpoon – no bigger than a writing pen – pierced an aluminum panel the size of a table tennis racket attached to the end of a satellite boom. The distance was just 5 feet, but researchers were delighted.

A video shows the harpoon slamming into the target and knocking it off its perch, and then the harpoon cable becoming entangled around the boom.

Aglietti said a much bigger harpoon will be needed in order to snare a real dead satellite – “Moby Dick style.” Thousands of old satellite and rocket parts, and other junk circle Earth.

The same team used a net to capture a piece of space junk, in a test last September. And in December, they tracked a tiny satellite ejected from the mother ship, using lasers.

All that remains is for the satellite, now 250 miles high, to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up.

If all goes according to plan, a sail will inflate in March and eventually drag the satellite down, its mission accomplished.

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