NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, first launched in 2021 to explore the Trojan asteroids trapped near Jupiter, has made an interesting discovery. The spacecraft found an asteroid, nicknamed Dinky, that actually has a smaller asteroid orbiting it, as originally reported by Scientific American. That’s right. It’s basically a moon with its own moon. It’s an ouroboros of cosmic curiosity.

The technical term here is a binary asteroid pair and Dinky, whose real name is Dinkinesh, was spotted by Lucy during a quick fly by. That’s when the spacecraft spotted the smaller “moon” orbiting it.

“A binary was certainly a possibility,” Jessica Sunshine, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, told Scientific American. “But it was not expected, and it’s really cool.”

As a matter of fact, the fly by itself wasn’t supposed to find anything of note. It was simply a trial run for the team to hone its skills before investigating the aforementioned Trojan asteroids orbiting the sun ahead of and behind Jupiter. The team wanted to make sure Lucy’s probe would successfully latch onto a space rock, even when both objects were moving extremely fast. Guess what? It worked. Hal Levinson, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the Lucy mission, said that the test was “amazingly successful.”

As for Dinky and its, uh, even dinkier satellite, NASA scientists still have a long way to go with its investigation, as only about one third of the relevant data has been beamed down to Earth. NASA has released a series of images showing Dinky and its pseudo-moon, but not any actual data as of yet.

Even just from these images, however, you can tell a lot about these two celestial bodies. There’s a visible equatorial ridge on the main body of Dinky aka Dinkinesh and a secondary ridge-line branching off from it. The parent asteroid is covered in craters, likely the result of numerous hits by other asteroids. Levinson says that there are more images to come of the secondary satellite and that these pictures suggest that the junior asteroid has some “interesting” stuff going on. He goes on to say that the shape is “really bizarre.”

Binary asteroid pairs are not rare, as researchers have found that around 15 percent of near-Earth asteroids boast a cute lil orbital companion. NASA and affiliated researchers are still waiting for more data on the pair, including color images and spectroscopy that should shed some more light on the two asteroids. Levinson says “there’s a lot of cool stuff to come.”

In the meantime, Lucy will continue on its original mission, to investigate those mysterious Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. It’ll make contact with one in 2025.

NASA will soon start testing what is dubbed as the world’s first commercial spaceplane capable of orbital flight, which will eventually be used to resupply the International Space Station. The agency is set to take delivery of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser, which should provide an alternative to SpaceX spacecraft for trips to the ISS.

In the coming weeks, the spaceplane (which is currently at Sierra Space’s facility in Colorado) will make its way to a NASA test site in Ohio. The agency will put the vehicle, which has been named Tenacity, through its paces for between one and three months. According to Ars Technica, NASA will conduct vibration, acoustic and temperature tests to ensure Tenacity can survive the rigors of a rocket launch. NASA engineers, along with government and contractor teams, are running tests to make sure it's safe for Tenacity to approach the ISS.

All going well, Tenacity is scheduled to make its first trip to space in April on the second flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. The rocket has yet to make its own first test flight, which is currently expected to happen in December. However, given how things tend to go with spaceflight, delays are always a possibility on both fronts.

The spaceplane has foldable wings, which allow it to fit inside the payload of the rocket. On its first mission, Tenacity is scheduled to stay at the ISS for 45 days. Afterward, it will return to Earth at the former space shuttle landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida rather than dropping into the ocean as many spacecraft tend to do. Sierra says the spacecraft is capable of landing at any compatible commercial runway.

“Plunging into the ocean is awful," Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice told Ars Technica. "Landing on a runway is really nice." The company claims Dream Chaser can bring cargo back to Earth at fewer than 1.5 Gs, which is important to help protect sensitive payloads. The spaceplane will be capable of taking up to 12,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS and bringing up to around 4,000 pounds of cargo back to terra firma. Sierra plans for its Dream Chaser fleet to eventually be capable of taking humans to low-Earth orbit too.

As things stand, SpaceX is the only company that operates fully certified spacecraft for NASA missions. Boeing also won a contract to develop a capsule for NASA back in 2014, but Starliner has yet to transport any astronauts.to the ISS. Sierra Nevada (from which Sierra Space was spun out in 2021) previously competed with those businesses for NASA commercial crew program contracts, but it lost out. However, after the company retooled Dream Chaser to focus on cargo operations for the time being, NASA chose Sierra to join its stable of cargo transportation providers in 2016.

Dream Chaser's first trip to the ISS has been a long time coming. It was originally planned for 2019 but the project was beset by delays. COVID-19 compounded those, as it constricted supply chains for key parts that Sierra Space needed before the company brought more of its construction work in house. The company is now aiming to have a second, human-rated version of Dream Chaser ready for the 2026 timeframe.

NASA has long been interested in using spaceplanes, dating back to the agency's early days, and it seems closer than ever to being able to use such vehicles. Virgin Galactic (which just carried out its fifth commercial flight on Thursday) uses spaceplanes for tourist and research flights, its vehicle is only capable of suborbital operations. With Dream Chaser, Sierra has loftier goals.

A sounding rocket toting a special imaging and spectroscopy instrument will take a brief trip to space Sunday night to try and capture as much data as it can on a long-admired supernova remnant in the Cygnus constellation. Its target, a massive cloud of dust and gas known as the Cygnus Loop or the Veil Nebula, was created after the explosive death of a star an estimated 20,000 years ago — and it’s still expanding.

NASA plans to launch the mission at 11:35 PM ET on Sunday October 29 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The Integral Field Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Experiment, or INFUSE, will observe the Cygnus Loop for only a few minutes, capturing light in the far-ultraviolet wavelengths to illuminate gasses as hot as 90,000-540,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s expected to fly to an altitude of about 150 miles before parachuting back to Earth.

The Cygnus Loop sits about 2,600 light-years away, and was formed by the collapse of a star thought to be 20 times the size of our sun. Since the aftermath of the event is still playing out, with the cloud currently expanding at a rate of 930,000 miles per hour, it’s a good candidate for studying how supernovae affect the formation of new star systems. “Supernovae like the one that created the Cygnus Loop have a huge impact on how galaxies form,” said Brian Fleming, principal investigator for the INFUSE mission.

“INFUSE will observe how the supernova dumps energy into the Milky Way by catching light given off just as the blast wave crashes into pockets of cold gas floating around the galaxy,” Fleming said. Once INFUSE is back on the ground and its data has been collected, the team plans to fix it up and eventually launch it again.

The moon has been a focal point for space research and exploration for years, yet we’re still far from fully understanding its origins. Take its age, for example – researchers have just discovered that the moon is about 40 million years older than previously thought.

In a study published by the European Association of Geochemistry, scientists looked at the age of crystal formations found in rock samples from the moon’s surface to determine its age. The prevalence of crystals called zircon in the samples, collected years ago from NASA’s Apollo program, suggests that the surface of the moon was created around 110 million years after the formation of the solar system. The scientists used analytical techniques including mass spectrometry to measure the presence of particular molecules in the rock. Another method of analysis, atom-probe tomography, was used to detect the amount of radioactive decay in the samples — which in turn was used to determine the age of the crystals in the rock. 

NASA holds a theory that a Mars-sized object collided with Earth several billion years ago to form the moon. This new understanding of the age of the moon actually gives scientists a rough idea of when that collision might have occurred. This finding highlights the importance of exploratory missions like the Apollo 17 mission at the heart of this discovery. The 1972 manned mission to geologically survey the surface of the moon resulted in 243 pounds of lunar material being brought back to Earth — only for it to be examined by researchers 51 years later.

To date, NASA says that more than 105 robotic spacecraft have been launched to explore the moon, so the opportunities for more findings are boundless. Although the next NASA-led manned mission to the moon won't happen until 2025 at the earliest, we can expect more rover programs to shed more light on the makings of the surface of the moon.

SpaceX has struck a deal with the European Space Agency (ESA) to launch four of Europe's Galileo navigation satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket, The Wall Street Journal has reported. It'll be the first time Elon Musk's company has launched any EU satellites containing classified equipment.

The ESA had planned to launch Galileo satellites using its homegrown Ariane 6 rocket, but the latter has seen frequent delays and isn't expected to make its inaugural launch until 2024 at the earliest. The deal is still subject to final approval by the EU Commission and member states, according to ESA director of navigation Javier Benedicto. 

SpaceX would launch the satellites from US territory, according to the terms of the deal. It would mark the first time Galileo equipment has been carried into orbit outside of European territory, barring early test versions launched from Kazakhstan. All other Galileo satellites have launched from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana — using Soyuz rockets at first and the Ariane 5 system later on. 

News of the deal isn't a big surprise, as it was reported this summer that Europe was seeking to cut a deal with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to "exceptionally launch Galileo satellites." Another alternative would have been Russian-built Soyuz rockets, but that was off the table due to EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. 

Ariane 6 was originally slated to launch in 2023, but multiple delays have pushed the first launch back to 2024. Recently, a short hotfire of the Vulcain 2.1 engine was delayed, and a long-duration static-fire test was pushed back from early October to late November. The Ariane 5 rocket is no longer an option, as it was retired after its final launch in July. 

SpaceX's launched Europe's Euclid telescope in July, and is slated to launch two other EU spacecraft in the near future. As it stands, the ESA only plans to make four Galileo launches using the Falcon 9. Musk himself has had a tenuous relationship with the EU — most recently, a top European Union official is warned him about the spread of misinformation on his social network platform X amid the Israel-Hamas war.

The Galileo system is key for Europe, as it makes it independent from the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and satnav systems from Russia and China. It's also used by EU military and security services to transmit encrypted messages. The service went live in 2016, but additional satellites are required to bolster the existing network. "It is a matter of robustness," said Benedicto. "We have 10 satellites that are ready to be launched, and those satellites should be in space, not on the ground." 

Space isn't hard only on account of the rocket science. The task of taking a NASA mission from development and funding through construction and launch — all before we even use the thing for science — can span decades. Entire careers have been spent putting a single satellite into space. Nobel-winning NASA physicist John Mather, mind you, has already helped send up two.

In their new book, Inside the Star Factory: The Creation of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Largest and Most Powerful Space Observatory, author Christopher Wanjek and photographer Chris Gunn take readers on a behind the scenes tour of the James Webb Space Telescope's own journey from inception to orbit. Weaving examinations of the radical imaging technology that enables us to peer deeper into the early universe than ever before with profiles of the researchers, advisors, managers, engineers and technicians that made it possible through three decades of effort. In this week's Hitting the Books excerpt, a look at JWST project scientist John Mather and his own improbable journey from rural New Jersey to NASA. 

MIT Press

Excerpted from “Inside the Star Factory: The Creation of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Largest and Most Powerful Space Observatory” Copyright © 2023 by Chris Gunn and Christopher Wanjek. Used with permission of the publisher, MIT Press.

John Mather, Project Scientist 

— The steady hand in control 

John Mather is a patient man. His 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics was thirty years in the making. That award, for unswerving evidence of the Big Bang, was based on a bus-sized machine called COBE — yet another NASA mission that almost didn’t happen. Design drama? Been there. Navigate unforeseen delays? Done that. For NASA to choose Mather as JWST Project Scientist was pure prescience. 

Like Webb, COBE — the Cosmic Background Explorer — was to be a time machine to reveal a snapshot of the early universe. The target era was just 370,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe was still a fog of elementary particles with no discernable structure. This is called the epoch of recombination, when the hot universe cooled to a point to allow protons to bind with electrons to form the very first atoms, mostly hydrogen with a sprinkling of helium and lithium. As the atoms formed, the fog lifted, and the universe became clear. Light broke through. That ancient light, from the Big Bang itself, is with us today as remnant microwave radiation called the cosmic microwave background. 

Tall but never imposing, demanding but never mean, Mather is a study in contrasts. His childhood was spent just a mile from the Appalachian Trail in rural Sussex County, New Jersey, where his friends were consumed by earthly matters such as farm chores. Yet Mather, whose father was a specialist in animal husbandry and statistics, was more intrigued by science and math. At age six he grasped the concept of infinity when he filled up a page in his notebook with a very large number and realized he could go on forever. He loaded himself up with books from a mobile library that visited the farms every couple of weeks. His dad worked for Rutgers University Agriculture Experiment Station and had a laboratory on the farm with radioisotope equipment for studying metabolism and liquid nitrogen tanks with frozen bull semen. His dad also was one of the earliest users of computers in the area, circa 1960, maintaining milk production records of 10,000 cows on punched IBM cards. His mother, an elementary school teacher, was quite learned, as well, and fostered young John’s interest in science.

A chance for some warm, year-round weather ultimately brought Mather in 1968 to University of California, Berkeley, for graduate studies in physics. He would fall in with a crowd intrigued by the newly detected cosmic microwave background, discovered by accident in 1965 by radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. His thesis advisor devised a balloon experiment to measure the spectrum, or color, of this radiation to see if it really came from the Big Bang. (It does.) The next obvious thing was to make a map of this light to see, as theory suggested, whether the temperature varied ever so slightly across the sky. And years later, that’s just what he and his COBE team found: anisotropy, an unequal distribution of energy. These micro-degree temperature fluctuations imply matter density fluctuations, sufficient to stop the expansion, at least locally. Through the influence of gravity, matter would pool into cosmic lakes to form stars and galaxies hundreds of millions of years later. In essence, Mather and his team captured a sonogram of the infant universe. 

Yet the COBE mission, like Webb, was plagued with setbacks. Mather and the team proposed the mission concept (for a second time) in 1976. NASA accepted the proposal but, that year, declared that this satellite and most others from then on would be delivered to orbit by the Space Shuttle, which itself was still in development. History would reveal the foolishness of such a plan. Mather understood immediately. This wedded the design of COBE to the cargo bay of the unbuilt Shuttle. Engineers would need to meet precise mass and volume requirements of a vessel not yet flown. More troublesome, COBE required a polar orbit, difficult for the Space Shuttle to deliver. The COBE team was next saddled with budget cuts and compromises in COBE’s design as a result of cost overruns of another pioneering space science mission, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, or IRAS. Still, the tedious work continued of designing instruments sensitive enough to detect variations of temperatures just a few degrees above absolute zero, about −270°C. From 1980 onward, Mather was consumed by the creation of COBE all day every day. The team needed to cut corners and make risky decisions to stay within budget. News came that COBE was to be launched on the Space Shuttle mission STS-82-B in 1988 from Vandenberg Air Force Base. All systems go.

Then the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, killing all seven of its crew. NASA grounded Shuttle flights indefinitely. COBE, now locked to Shuttle specifications, couldn’t launch on just any other rocket system. COBE was too large for a Delta rocket at this point; ironically, Mather had the Delta in mind in his first sketch in 1974. The team looked to Europe for a launch vehicle, but this was hardly an option for NASA. Instead, the project managers led a redesign to shave off hundreds of pounds, to slim down to a 5,000-pound launch mass, with fuel, which would just make it within the limits of a Delta by a few pounds. Oh, and McDonnell Douglas had to build a Delta rocket from spare parts, having been forced to discontinue the series in favor of the Space Shuttle. 

The team worked around the clock over the next two years. The final design challenge was ... wait for it ... a sunshield that now needed to be folded into the rocket and spring-released once in orbit, a novel approach. COBE got the greenlight to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the originally desired site because it would provide easier access to a polar orbit compared to launching a Shuttle from Florida. Launch was set for November 1989. COBE was delivered several months before. 

Then, on October 17, the California ground shook hard. A 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck Santa Cruz County, causing widespread damage to structures. Vandenberg, some 200 miles south, felt the jolt. As pure luck would have it, COBE was securely fastened only because two of the engineers minding it secured it that day before going off to get married. The instrument suffered no damage and launched successfully on November 18. More drama came with the high winds on launch day. Myriad worries followed in the first weeks of operation: the cryostat cooled too quickly; sunlight reflecting off of Antarctic ice played havoc with the power system; trapped electrons and protons in the Van Allen belts disrupted the functioning of the electronics; and so on. 

All the delays, all the drama, faded into a distant memory for Mather as the results of the COBE experiment came in. Data would take four years to compile. But the results were mind-blowing. The first result came weeks after launch, when Mather showed the spectrum to the American Astronomical Society and received a standing ovation. The Big Bang was safe as a theory. Two years later, at an April 1992 meeting of the American Physical Society, the team showed their first map. Data matched theory perfectly. This was the afterglow of the Big Bang revealing the seeds that would grow into stars and galaxies. Physicist Stephen Hawking called it “the most important discovery of the century, if not of all time.” 

Mather spoke humbly of the discovery at his Nobel acceptance speech in 2006, fully crediting his remarkable team and his colleague George Smoot, who shared the prize with him that year. But he didn’t downplay the achievement. He noted that he was thrilled with the now broader “recognition that our work was as important as people in the professional astronomy world have known for so long.” 

Mather maintains that realism today. While concerned about delays, threats of cancellation, cost overruns, and not-too-subtle animosity in the broader science community over the “telescope that ate astronomy,” he didn’t let this consume him or his team. “There’s no point in trying to manage other people’s feelings,” he said. “Quite a lot of the community opinion is, ‘well, if it were my nickel, I’d spend it differently.’ But it isn’t their nickel; and the reason why we have the nickel in the first place is because NASA takes on incredibly great challenges. Congress approved of us taking on great challenges. And great challenges aren’t free. My feeling is that the only reason why we have an astronomy program at NASA for anyone to enjoy — or complain about — is that we do astonishingly difficult projects. We are pushing to the edge of what is possible.” 

Webb isn’t just a little better than the Hubble Space Telescope, Mather added; it’s a hundred times more powerful. Yet his biggest worry through mission design was not the advanced astronomy instruments but rather the massive sunshield, which needed to unfold. All instruments and all the deployment mechanisms had redundancy engineered into them; there are two or more ways to make them work if the primary method fails. But that’s not the only issue with a sunshield. It would either work or not work. 

Now Mather can focus completely on the science to be had. He expects surprises; he’d be surprised if there were no surprises. “Just about everything in astronomy comes as a surprise,” he said. “When you have new equipment, you will get a surprise.” His hunch is that Webb might reveal something weird about the early universe, perhaps an abundance of short-lived objects never before seen that say something about dark energy, the mysterious force that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, or the equally mysterious dark matter. He also can’t wait until Webb turns its cameras to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth. What if there’s a planet there suitable for life? Webb should have the sensitivity to detect molecules in its atmosphere, if present. 

“That would be cool,” Mather said. Hints of life from the closest star system? Yes, cool, indeed.

India has announced plans to build its own space station by 2035, and carry out a human mission to the moon five years later. The country has ramped up its space program in recent years, becoming the first in the world to successfully land a spacecraft near the lunar south pole just this past August. Shortly after, in September, it launched a probe to study the sun. But, human spaceflight is new territory. Its upcoming Gaganyaan mission will be the first time India has sent astronauts to space using its own capabilities, and it’s now gearing up to start testing the vehicles that will support a human crew.

In a meeting led by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country’s space agency laid out a plan to achieve its first crewed launch in 2025 ahead of its eventual moon mission. It has a demonstration flight of its Crew Escape System Test Vehicle currently set for Oct 21, and will later send its launch vehicle on three test missions without humans on board. All in all, India is planning around 20 tests in the leadup to sending astronauts to space.

The country says it’s building a new launch pad and a next generation launch vehicle to make its admittedly “ambitious” other goals possible. In addition to establishing the Bharatiya Antariksha Station — or the Indian Space Station — by 2035 and launching a crewed mission to the moon by 2040, India also has its sights on interplanetary missions. Modi expressed interest in the development of a Venus orbiter and a Mars lander, too.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has blasted off and begun a six-year, 2.2-billion-mile journey to a peculiar asteroid. Astronomers have speculated that the space rock, also named Psyche, was once the partial core of a small planet in the early days of the Solar System. The seemingly iron- and nickel-rich asteroid may hold clues to the formation of planets, including our own.

On Friday, the uncrewed Psyche spacecraft lifted off at 10:19AM ET aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After successfully jettisoning its fairings and separating from the rocket, ground controllers established two-way communication. Telemetry reports indicate it made it to space in good health. The mission had faced numerous delays before finally lifting off.

Psyche (the asteroid) rotates around the sun in a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Researchers estimate it’s made of 30 to 60 percent nickel-iron core, allowing them a rare glimpse into a (possible) planetary core. “My best guess is that it’s more than half metal based on the data that we’ve got,” Lindy Elkins-Tanton, an Arizona State University professor working as the mission’s principal investigator, told The New York Times. “We’re really going to see a kind of new object, which means that a lot of our ideas are going to be proven wrong.”

NASA / Kim Shiflett

The spacecraft will take around six years to reach Psyche. At that point, NASA’s Psyche craft will orbit the asteroid for 26 months, studying it with various instruments. The craft will use cameras to get an up-close peek, a magnetometer to look for an ancient magnetic field, a gamma-ray spectrometer to detect high-energy gamma rays and neutrons and a radio antenna to map the space rock’s gravity.

“I am excited to see the treasure trove of science Psyche will unlock as NASA’s first mission to a metal world,” said Nicola Fox, a NASA Science Mission Directorate associate. “By studying asteroid Psyche, we hope to better understand our universe and our place in it, especially regarding the mysterious and impossible-to-reach metal core of our own home planet, Earth.”

The spacecraft will also test NASA’s deep space laser communications, an experimental communications method that could increase deep space bandwidth 100-fold over the current standard, radio waves. “It’s exciting to know that, in a few short weeks, Deep Space Optical Communications will begin sending data back to Earth to test this critical capability for the future of space exploration,” said Dr. Prasun Desai, Associate Administrator (Acting), STMD at NASA HQ. “The insights we learn will help us advance these innovative new technologies and, ultimately, pursue bolder goals in space.”

Earth’s orbit is getting crowded.

Last year, a record 2,409 objects were sent to orbit, the bulk of which were satellites settling into the increasingly cluttered region 1,200 miles above our planet’s surface known as low Earth orbit. Another 2,000-plus satellites have joined them so far this year, according to the UN’s Online Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space. As the presence of artificial objects in orbit grows, so too does the accumulation of debris, or space junk — and the risk of collisions. Dealing with existing waste and preventing its unchecked growth has become imperative, but it’s a problem that doesn’t have one simple solution.

Currently, the US Department of Defense’s Space Surveillance Network tracks more than 25,000 objects larger than 4 inches wide, most of which are concentrated in low Earth orbit, and there are an estimated millions of smaller objects still that are trickier to pinpoint. This includes everything from defunct satellites and spacecraft fragments to things as small as a paint chip, all of which can cause damage to other equipment due to the extreme speeds orbiting objects travel at. As yet, there have been no successful missions to remove extant debris from orbit. Proposals for removing this debris fall into two broad (and imperfect) categories: pushing them further from Earth into graveyard orbits where they pose less risk, or pulling them towards Earth where they'll deorbit and burn up in the atmosphere.

One such system is being developed and tested by Astroscale. The company, headquartered in Japan, demonstrated a magnetic capture-and-release tactic in 2021 with its ELSA-d mission, which simulated the strategy using an extra satellite it brought with it as mock debris. In a real-world scenario, its magnet would lock on to debris floating through space and drag it down to deorbit. Astroscale is selling its own docking plates that satellite operators can affix to their equipment ahead of launches, so it can easily be removed after a mission’s end. It's partnered with UK-based OneWeb to test how this will work, and plans to execute a full removal demonstration using one of the company's internet satellites in 2025 under the ELSA-M mission. 

Astroscale will also soon launch its ADRAS-J spacecraft in partnership with Japan’s space agency, JAXA, to demonstrate the ability to safely approach and inspect a real target ahead of future removal attempts. And, it's gearing up for a separate mission dubbed COSMIC that will use a robotic arm to grab objects in orbit, this time aiming for a pair of dead British satellites. That is expected to launch in the next few years.

The European Space Agency similarly commissioned Swiss startup ClearSpace for a junk removal mission that’s slated to launch in 2026. It’s expected to be the first mission to actually remove a real piece of debris from orbit, rather than perform a simulated capture. Ironically, the target of the ClearSpace-1 mission — an approximately 250-pound defunct rocket upper stage dubbed Vespa — was struck by untracked debris in August. The event created more debris, but ESA says it left the object intact and still in position for capture. ClearSpace will attempt to grab onto Vespa using a giant robotic claw, and the two will deorbit together, ending with them both burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Researchers have also experimented with the use of harpoons and nets to catch objects floating through space. The first mission to demonstrate these active debris removal techniques was one called RemoveDEBRIS, which launched in 2018. In 2018 and 2019, the craft successfully performed simulated debris capture by firing out a net and ensnaring a mock target, and by shooting a harpoon at a target to pierce and hook onto it. The company behind the project — Surrey Satellite Technology — does not appear to have any follow-up missions planned.

A cost-benefit analysis released last year by NASA noted that the benefit of space tugs like these could surpass their upfront costs in a matter of decades, but using space- or ground-based lasers to nudge debris out of orbit could break even much sooner. Lasers can move objects either through the momentum of their photons, or through a process called ablation, in which thrust is generated when the laser vaporizes bits of debris. The latter especially could be used for both large and small objects, either to deorbit debris or move trackable pieces out of another satellite’s way to avoid a collision.

“The process of laser ablation and photon pressure induces a change in velocity in the target debris, which ultimately alters the size and shape of its orbit,” said West Virginia University engineer Hang Woon Lee, who NASA recently granted up to three years of funding for research into this tactic. Doing so could mean “avoiding potentially catastrophic events,” he said. Using multiple lasers at once, instead of a single beam, could produce even greater effects.

Others yet are looking into means of recycling space debris, both to cut down on junk and to limit the reliance on reentries for its removal. While reentry is among the preferred disposal methods, it doesn’t come entirely without side effects of its own, which haven’t yet been well studied. Scientists have begun to speak up about the potential ozone-depleting effects of having large numbers of satellites disintegrate in Earth’s atmosphere, which releases pollutants like aluminum and nitrogen oxides. There are concerns about harmful pollution in the ocean, too, where spacecraft parts that don’t fully break apart end up.

NASA ODPO

Companies like Neumann Space and CisLunar Industries are developing the means to melt down metal parts from debris in space and reuse that material as fuel. The former’s Neumann Drive converts metal rods into plasma to generate thrust, and was just recently integrated into a satellite for the first time to begin tests of the system in space. CisLunar, on the other hand, is building the technology to create those metal fuel rods, along with other materials that could be repurposed to support other missions.

In the US, policymakers are starting to clamp down on commercial entities contributing to the pollution. The FCC handed out its first-ever fine for space debris in early October, and revised its guidelines last year for operations in low Earth orbit, with a new mandate that states satellites in LEO must be transitioned out of orbit within 5 years of completing their missions. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is also eyeing more stringent policies, and proposed a new rule in September that would require commercial launch operators to have a plan in place to remove rocket upper stages from orbit within set timelines, from 30 days to 25 years depending on the circumstances.

Thanks to the rapid acceleration of commercial space activities in the 2020s, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of new satellites arrive in orbit, and there are many more yet on their way. With more launch providers on the scene and innovation in reusable launch systems, led by SpaceX with its Falcon 9 rockets, launches have become less costly and more attainable. And competition to provide space-based internet connectivity by way of satellite “megaconstellations” is intensifying; SpaceX’s Starlink fleet is now at about 5,000 and counting, Amazon just launched the first two prototypes of its eventual 3,200 Project Kuiper satellites and OneWebb has placed over 600 satellites in orbit as of early 2023.

Scientists have long warned about the potentially catastrophic chain reactions that could be caused by space junk if it’s allowed to get out of hand. In the 1970s, NASA scientists Donald Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais argued in a paper that rampant debris could spur collisions that in turn create more debris, and cause more collisions. The risk of impacts between satellites increases, too, as more are pumped into orbit. We’ve already seen a glimpse of how disastrous that could be. In 2009, a commercial Iridium 33 satellite collided with a long-defunct Russian military satellite, Cosmos 2251, creating nearly 2,000 pieces of large debris.

Satellite destruction on a mass scale would have grave consequences both in space and on Earth. It could interfere with science activities and space exploration, and threaten the safety of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It would also disrupt communications on the ground, removing major sources of internet and cellular connectivity, and GPS. Weather services we’ve long relied on would be interrupted.

More than half of all satellites that have ever been sent to orbit are still up there, a lot of them inactive. “Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water,” ESA Director General Jan Wörner said in 2019, when ClearSpace-1 was announced. “That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue.”

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought back samples from the asteroid Bennu and, in a livestream earlier today, NASA scientists showed us what it found hanging out in the great vastness of the cosmos. Simply put, the agency brought back a fairly large sample collection of various-sized rocks, dust particles and intermediate-sized particles. 

The big news here is that samples from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid contain not only carbon, which is to be expected, but also water. These are the building blocks of life on Earth and, likely, everywhere else, so this is a big deal.

NASA

“The OSIRIS-REx sample is the biggest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever delivered to Earth and will help scientists investigate the origins of life on our own planet for generations to come,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. 

While space rocks and dust may seem boring to those expecting a bevy of friendly aliens, there's still plenty of time to make more fantastic discoveries. These samples have only been on the planet since September 25 and initial studies just began. NASA says they'll continue to study the particles and will create a registry of some kind so scientists from other organizations can borrow portions for a looksie. Some samples are also heading to museums. 

The space agency says that the "secrets held within the rocks and dust from the asteroid will be studied for decades to come, offering insights into how our solar system was formed, how the precursor materials to life may have been seeded on Earth, and what precautions need to be taken to avoid asteroid collisions with our home planet."

Additionally, scientists were pleasantly surprised by the presence of "bonus asteroid material" covering the outside of the collector head, canister lid and base. Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, says that the agency is ready with additional specialized tools to "study this precious gift from the cosmos."

OSIRIS-REx actually grabbed the sample from Bennu all the way back in 2020. After that, the space vessel spent 18 months analyzing the asteroid from above before making its way back to orbit our favorite life-sustaining blue marble.

Bennu is an ancient relic of our solar system, as NASA says it was formed anywhere from 700 million to 2 billion years ago after breaking off a much larger asteroid that was originally formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Due to its older-than-Methuselah status, these Bennu fragments could actually give us a window into how life started on Earth, thanks to the carbon and water already discovered and any future findings.

This isn't the end for the curious spacecraft OSIRIS-REx. It's still out there, doing its best Jim Kirk impression. Next up? The craft's heading to an asteroid named Apophis under a new mission name, OSIRIS-APEX.