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EARTHDATE: February 6, 2011

Official News page 6


REAL LIFE NEWS: SPACE FISHING

by Hazed

Earth orbit is a junkyard. There's so much debris floating around out there that it could be a hazard to orbital shipping - as many as ten million bits and pieces. NASA's been keeping an eye on the situation and has produced some images that gives a graphic example of just how messy it is up there.

Now the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has a cunning plan to deal with the menace that this orbiting debris poses. It's going to use a really big net. They are working with a fishing net manufacturer to develop a metal mesh that will capture the rogue scrap and send it into the Earth's upper atmosphere, where it will burn up.

Nitto Seimo, the net company, has spent the past six years working on this new space net, and if all goes to plan it will be ready to be deployed in two years. It will extend over several miles, capturing trash while at the same time acquiring an electrical charge. This will eventually cause it to be pulled by Earth's magnetic fields towards the atmosphere where it will be incinerated.

This sounds like a clever solution to a growing problem. I look forward to hearing more about this in a couple of years time.


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