A Chinese startup company called Origin Space has launched a prototype robot designed to collect space debris and eventually mine asteroids while in low-Earth orbit.
The Neo-01 robot was launched on the Chinese state-backed rocket Long March recently, and weighs about 30 kg. The system will use a net to catch debris.
Satellites of all kinds – military and civilian – have been launched in their thousands in the past few decades. And when these become obsolete, they just end up floating in space, accounting for a large portion of the debris floating around in space above Earth’s atmosphere.
According to some estimates, approximately 3,000 satellites and millions of small pieces of related debris are currently in space with no feasible way of recovering, recycling or disposing of them in a clean way.
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