In the United States, space startup TransAstra has won a NASA competition to produce “bags” to collect trash from orbiting our planet. In this respect informs Space News quotes company representatives.
The deal amounted to $850,000. Under the terms of the contract, TransAstra would need to build a prototype of the device and successfully test it on Earth.
The idea to capture space debris using inflatable structures arose while working on a project for asteroid protection at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Initially, it was supposed to capture potentially dangerous objects in near-Earth space in this way and send them into lunar orbit.
TransAstra plans to produce “bags” that can carry both microsatellites weighing 1.3 kg, as well as spent rocket bodies, fixed-position communication devices and asteroids weighing up to 50,000 tons.
In the future, TransAstra proposes to transport the collected space debris to another space organization, ThinkOrbital’s ThinkPlatform orbital processing facility. According to the company, this approach will allow you to use 82 percent less fuel and save 40 percent time when cleaning near-Earth space. However, companies do not yet give an approximate time frame for the creation of such an infrastructure.
Formerly Russian spacecraft Progress MS-22 remove As a result of the ISS colliding with space debris.