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Vespa remained 800 km above Earth – a region densely populated with spaceships – after launching a satellite in 2013.
After securing the Vespa, the ClearSpace-1 spacecraft will drag it out of orbit so that it would burn in the atmosphere.
ESA has warned that there are now thousands of pieces of space junk in Earth’s orbit after six decades of missions to the stars.
Space junk can travel at average speeds of 27,000 km / h, which means that even small bits of debris, such as paint, can damage satellites.
“In nearly 60 years of space activity, more than 5,550 launches have brought about 42,000 tracked objects into orbit, of which about 23,000 remain in space and are regularly tracked,” an ESA spokesman said.
“With today’s annual launch rates averaging nearly 100, and with ruptures continuing to occur at historic average rates of four to five per year, the number of debris objects in space will steadily increase.”
The debris also threatens the International Space Station, where crews of astronauts have lived since 2000, and which has had to adjust its orbit three times this year already due to space debris.
The ClearSpace-1 mission is expected to launch in 2025.
Twenty years of the International Space Station
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