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Life imitates art, right? That doesn’t have to mean it’s good art to result in a good cause.  In that vein, the Swiss Space Center yesterday announced that they’ll be launching the CleanSpace One project, with its first goal to build and deploy a “janitor satellite” named CleanSpace One, with the singular task of tracking down the detrius we’ve left stranded in our solar front yard. The space junk will then be carried back towards Earth, with the goal of burning up during re-entry.

“It has become essential to be aware of the existence of this debris and the risks that are run by its proliferation,” says Claude Nicollier, astronaut and EPFL professor. To move beyond mere rhetoric and take immediate action to get this stuff out of orbit, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is launching CleanSpace One, a project to build the first prototype in a family of “de-orbiting” satellites.
From: [EPFL]

When CleanSpace One’s mission is done, it’ll burn up along with the trash, though subsequent models may have a more long term contract. Oh, and that “life imitates art” bit, see the video below… It’s not every day that one gets to drop a somewhat relevant Quark reference.

SOURCE: [EPFL] – VIA: [The Verge]

Tags: CleanSpace One, EPFL, satellite, space debris