Sadie in space!

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Friday, February 17, 2012

Sadie the satelitte cleaning lady is heading into space - well, in three to five years' time anyway!

Swiss scientists are gearing up to launch what amounts to a giant space vacuum cleaner, to gobble up space junk that's creating serious clutter.

CleanSpace One [ okay, it's not called Sadie!] will start by grabbing two Swiss satellites that were launched in 2009 and 2010, but are about to be phased out.

More than 500,000 pieces of spent rocket stages, broken satellites and other debris are orbiting Earth and that debris travels at speeds nearing 28,000km/h. The speed is fast enough to destroy or damage a satellite or spacecraft.

CleanSpaceOne has to match the speed of the junk, grab hold and stabilise it and finally, guide the everything back to Earth's atmosphere, where both the Swiss satellite and the garbage would burn on re-entry.

Space junk has collided with satellites at least twice: In 1996, a French satellite was damaged by a rocket fragment, and in 2009, a United States satellite was destroyed in a collision with a derelict Russian satellite.