CHINA TOPIX

‘Pac-Man’ Spacecraft: Meet The Garbage Collector In Space

KJ Belonio   |

Jul 07, 2015 07:07 PM EDT

A new research project is about to launch a spacecraft into Earth’s low orbit to collect and dispose litters in space. The project is part of a cleanup drive on the increasing amount of space junk. The Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Center for Space Engineering’s CleanSpace Project has been working on the growing concern on how to safely track, collect and dispose satellites that have outlasted their usefulness but aren’t going to return to Earth at all. So in order to cleanup orbiting clutter, the team decided Monday to use the “Pac-Man” technique.