There are approximately 16,000 pieces of debris larger than 10cm that are known to surround our planet, and there’s nothing pretty much nothing we can do about it bar sending someone up to space to clean it up. Well, it looks like that’s exactly what the Swiss Space Center is going to do. It has been reported that the folks there will be sending up a janitor satellite named CleanSpace One to do the dirty work.
Measuring only 30 x 10 x 10 cm in volume, this janitor satellite will be released from a space shuttle, pick up rubbish with a grappling mechanism, and then dive back down to Earth at high-speeds, hopefully disintegrating as it enters our planet’s atmosphere. And yes, this means the CleanSpace One isn’t reusable. But if all goes well, our space satellites won’t have to worry about colliding with stray particles while orbiting the planet. Check out a video about CleanSpace One below: