© Science Photo Library; Astroscale
Japanese space-sustainability company Astroscale just inked a deal to take a bus-sized J rocket stage out of orbit by the end of the decade. The pioneering project, funded by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is a continuation of Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission, which recently completed an up-close orbital inspection of a 12-year-old upper stage of a Japanese H-IIA rocket.
The new mission, called ADRAS-J2, will grab the rocket stage using a robotic arm and pull it into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up, demonstrating a critical space cleanup technology. The out-of-control nature and age of the rocket body pose challenges for its removal, but the ADRAS-J inspection showed that the rocket’s payload adapter, which will be used to grab the rocket, is intact. “Unprepared objects in orbit pose an additional challenge as they have not been prepared with any technologies that enable docking, potential servicing or removal,” Astroscale said.