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There are 2,000-plus dead rockets in orbit—here’s a rare view of one | A Japanese company becomes the first to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit.
A Japanese company becomes the first to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit.
ADRAS-J autonomously maneuvered around the rocket at a distance of about 50 meters (164 feet), using navigation data from a light detection and ranging sensor and Astroscale's custom-developed guidance algorithms to control its position as the vehicles moved around Earth at nearly 4.7 miles per second (7.6 kilometers per second). A few years ago, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) cinched a public-private partnership with Astroscale to demonstrate technologies the private sector could use to remove large pieces of space debris littering low-Earth orbit. In a press release, Astroscale said observations from ADRAS-J revealed no major damage to the H-IIA rocket's payload attach fitting, which is the planned capture point for the next mission.
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