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Astroscale aced the world’s first rendezvous with a piece of space junk (arstechnica.com)

submitted 18 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

This is a fantastic accomplishment, and will hopefully be used to clear the skies a bit.

However, it has a down-side: Some nations (US, USSR, China, etc.) have a lot of tech in the skies, some of which they'd like to remain secret. Those nations will either have to match this skill (not high on their priority list in the past) or include self-destruct mechanisms in their future orbital vehicles so that the secret tech stays out of the hands of rival nations. You can guess which way they'll lean.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Isn't deorbiting self destruction?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago

or they could just deorbit their stages after they're done?

i think this is honestly a really good incentive for governments to clean up their space debris