The Swiss Space Center's announcement that it is developing a "janitorial satellite" to clean up junk in lower Earth orbit is good news. As fastidiousness is one of Switzerland's national traits, it will be a boon to the world if its CleanSpace One satellite works as advertised when it is deployed within five years.
Some space debris is as large as a bus. It threatens communications satellites, hurricane trackers, the International Space Station, manned flights, and other systems. Orbiting at 17,000 miles an hour, a big piece of junk can be reduced to thousands of fragments in an instant upon collision.
NASA is tracking 20,000 pieces of junk. Five hundred large pieces are the responsibility of the U.S. government to remove. Russia has 1,000 pieces of spent rocket stages and dead satellites to pick up. Yet the Swiss, with only two small satellites in orbit, have become innovators on clearing space junk.
When CleanSpace One launches, it will rendezvous with a dead satellite, grab it, and drag it back to Earth's atmosphere, where both will burn and plunge into the ocean. If it works, it will provide a model for the international community.
NASA is working on plans for collecting junk with balloon technology. Removing a half-dozen large objects from space each year would greatly reduce and eventually eliminate the threat.
A decade of conscientious removal would reverse the trend. Along with exploring the cosmos, launching vacuum cleaners into the vacuum of space is the kind of housekeeping the global space-faring community should get behind.
First Published February 25, 2012, 5:00 a.m.