Japanese space agency JAXA is going to hunt space junk with a network in February

The problem of space debris - all sorts of remnants of spacecraft, devices, "dead" satellites in Earth orbit, becomes more urgent from year to year. In fact, even a relatively small object is capable of inflicting significant disruptions on currently operating spacecraft and satellites. Something similar was shown in the film "Gravity", although somewhat exaggerated. It's no joke, about 5.5 thousand tons of "garbage" is already in orbit now.

So, the Japanese space agency JAXA offers to collect space debris in a special large network. It is assumed that the length of the network for the initial tests will be about 300 meters. Of course, the network will not be rope / nylon, but metallized, and the material will be magnetic in order to better capture the metal parts of the spacecraft.
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Interestingly, the network itself will be created by the company that produces nets for fishing. The network will be attached to a special spacecraft, which will "carry" the network in orbit. After the space trawl is filled, it will be sent to Earth, so that both the garbage and the network itself will burn in the atmosphere of our Earth.

If the tests are successful, the next step will be the creation of a kilometer network.

And yes, all this is not a conceptual project, the first stage of testing with a 300-meter network will begin at the end of February of this year.

Via dvice