​​Prototype Satellite Launched on SpaceX Rocket Will Try to Clean Up Space Junk On the whole, space is mostly empty, but…

​​Prototype Satellite Launched on SpaceX Rocket Will Try to Clean Up Space Junk

On the whole, space is mostly empty, but the space around the Earth is anything but. Earth’s orbit is full of thousands of satellites, pieces of debris, and junk from the thousands of rocket launches over the past few decades. This presents a serious problem for future satellites: Any one of them could be randomly taken out by a flying piece of space junk.

The only way to solve this problem is to clean up space, but that’s easier said than done. Plenty of organizations, including NASA and the Chinese and Japanese space agencies, have developed their own prototype space debris catchers. On Monday, one such debris catcher, named RemoveDEBRIS, was launched into space and will undergo testing over the next few weeks.