Maybe.

To combat this issue, Astroscale Inc., a private Japan-headquartered company, has devised several commercial spacecrafts tasked with decluttering space. The company is on track to deliver the world’s first garbage truck for removing defunct satellites in 2,024 and today announced its prototype completed its first demonstration in space. Although experts say that one active debris remover isn’t enough to solve the problem, it is an important move toward protecting valuable equipment in space, including satellites that aid with everything from weather forecasts to GPS navigation.

“Those services are under threat,” says Lewis. “That threat is the destruction of the satellites, or the disruption to the services because we have to maneuver the satellites to avoid the space debris.”

Astroscale’s efforts are one of the first, tiny steps towards cleaning up debris. Its flagship mission is ELSA, short for “end-of-life services by Astroscale.” ELSA will drag satellites that are no longer operating down from high altitudes to the planet’s natural incinerator: the oxygen-rich atmosphere at lower Earth orbits. Both the space-cleaner and satellite will burn up here before they hit the surface of the Earth. In March this year, Astroscale launched its prototype ELSA-d (d stands for demonstration) to test its proximity capture technology. It contains two satellites: a chaser and a target that will proxy as a hunk of wreckage. Each satellite is equipped with a magnetic docking plate so that the chaser can latch onto its target.

Rocket Lab is one step closer to going to Mars with NASA’s approval of the company’s Photon spacecraft for an upcoming science mission. If all continues according to plan the two craft will launch in2024and arrive on the red planet 11 months later to study its magnetosphere.

The mission is known as the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE (hats off to whoever worked that one out), and was proposed for a small satellite science program back in 2,019 eventually being chosen as a finalist. UC Berkeley researchers are the main force behind the science part. (You can read much more about the project here.)

These satellites have to be less than 180 kilograms (about 400 pounds) and must perform standalone science missions, part of a new program aiming at more lightweight, shorter lead missions that can be performed with strong commercial industry collaboration. A few concepts have been baking since the original announcement of the program, and ESCAPADE just passed Key Decision Point C, meaning it’s ready to go from concept to reality.

In 2,024 NASA is scheduled to return humans to the surface of the Moon with the Artemis III mission. One year before that, Artemis II should circle the satellite without touching down. Both missions are to be crewed by experienced astronauts. But not the dearMoon mission, which will carry civilians to the Moon and back on SpaceX hardware.

Harvard & Smithsonian, where she directs the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division. She is a past President of the American Astronomical Society and holds degrees from Wellesley College and Harvard University. Her interest in the star Betelgeuse began in the mid-80’s with measurements from satellites that documented the 420-day pulsation period of Betelgeuse. She also led the extraordinary team that captured the first image of a star other than the Sun – an image of Betelgeuse taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in ultraviolet light – revealing its brightly varying surface.