Then there is the space junk — nearly 30,000 objects bigger than a softball hurtling a few hundred miles above Earth, ten times faster than a bullet. Other analysts recently estimated the number likely to make it to orbit is closer to 20,000. “Ten years ago, people thought that our founder was crazy for even talking about space debris,” Ron Lopez told CNN while strolling past the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The satellite, named “On Closer Inspection,” will observe the motions of a rocket stage that was left in low-Earth orbit in 2009. Astroscale’s mission will use cameras and sensors to study the rocket debris and figure out how to get it out of orbit.

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Persons: ”, Troy Thornberry, “, ” Thornberry, Neil Armstrong’s, Donald Kessler, “ Kessler, Ron Lopez, ” Lopez, Lopez, Astroscale Organizations: CNN, Sputnik, NOAA, NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, US, Surveillance, NASA, SpaceX, Space, Smithsonian Air, Space Museum, Rocket, Rocket Lab Locations: Washington ,, Astroscale, New Zealand, Japan