Space debris removal demonstration launches

A Soyuz rocket has launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to put 38 different satellites in orbit.Among the payloads was a 500kg Earth imager developed by the South Korean space agency; and a pair of spacecraft from the Tokyo-headquartered Astroscale company which will give a demonstration of how to clean up orbital debris.Astroscale's showcase will be run from an operations centre in the UK.The Soyuz flight lasted nearly five hours following a 06:07 GMT lift-off.The long duration was a consequence of having to put so many different satellites in three different orbits roughly 500km to 550km above the Earth.A lot of interest ahead of launch had focussed on the Astroscale mission.With the space environment becoming increasingly cluttered, there is heightened awareness that something needs to be done to sweep away spaceflight's legacy of discarded hardware.This debris - of which there is roughly 9,000 tonnes up there - is a potential collision risk to the operational systems that deliver much-needed services, such as weather forecasting and telecommunications.Smart solutions sought to make orbital traffic saferRemoveDebris: UK satellite tracks 'space junk'Mega-constellation satellites will need 'rapid disposal'Astroscale launched what it calls Elsa-D (End-of-Life Service by Astroscale demonstration). The demonstration mission consists of two spacecraft: a 175kg "servicer" and a 17kg "client".On the Soyuz, the duo were connected, but in the coming weeks they will be commanded to separate to begin a repeating game of cat and mouse.The servicer will use its sensors to find and chase down the client, latching on to it using a magnetic docking plate, before then releasing "the mouse" for another capture experiment.The task will become increasingly complex, with the most difficult rendezvous requiring the servicer to grab the client as it's tumbling.IMAGE COPYRIGHTASTROSCALEimage captionThe servicer and client during testing prior to Monday launchUltimately, the pair will be commanded to come out of orbit to burn up in the atmosphere."The mission simulates a scenario where we would rendezvous with, and dock with, and capture a piece of debris that is free-floating in space," explained Astroscale chief technical officer Mike Lindsay."We would then lower the debris, such that it re-enters Earth's atmosphere and stays out of the way of other spacecraft and operations," he told BBC News.There is a burgeoning waste problem in the volume of space just above the Earth - a few hundred to a few thousand km in altitude.