Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On August 23, the European Space Agency is monitoring a piece of space junk and wants to capture and remove it in the next few years. However, the object was recently hit by another piece of debris, causing it to split into more fragments.

The European Space Agency confirmed on Tuesday that the US 18th Space Defense Squadron had found some new debris near a payload adapter called VESPA. The European Space Agency had planned to remove the adapter from space. Analysts say the new debris is most likely due to an untracked small object hitting VESPA at high speed.

VESPA is the wreckage of an European Vega rocket launched from South America in 2013. It is a conical attachment that is used to deploy the rocket's satellite into orbit and remain in Earth orbit. The European Space Agency says the new debris poses little risk to other spacecraft.

The European Space Agency has been keeping an eye on this piece of space junk because it plans to carry out a ClearSpace-1 mission in 2026, which will be the first time space junk in orbit has been captured and removed. Most space debris removal missions are aimed at testing debris, not junk that already exists in space.

The irony of ▲ ClearSpace-1 's concept map of catching rocket debris in space seems ironic, but the European Space Agency sees it as the best proof. "this debris incident highlights the importance of the ClearSpace-1 mission," the European Space Agency wrote in a statement. "the main threat posed by larger space debris is that they will split into many smaller fragments, each of which could cause serious damage to the moving satellite."

The orbital environment around the earth is becoming more and more crowded. The number of active satellites has increased approximately fourfold since 2019, mainly due to multiple launches of SpaceX's Starlink satellite. According to NASA, the US Department of Defense is tracking more than 27000 pieces of debris in Earth orbit, while millions more cannot be tracked by operating sensors.

The European Space Agency will spend weeks analyzing the impact of the collision to determine its impact on the ClearSpace-1 mission. But the plan is to continue to advance the development of this task.

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