In the middle of a space flight, an astronaut heard a massive bang. He looked up and saw a piece of space junk embedded in the window of the shuttle.
If the debris had been bigger, it could have blown out the window, and the crew would have all died, the astronaut told Joel C. Sercel, the founder and CEO of TransAstra.
"Space junk is one of the greatest perils that astronauts face in low Earth orbit today," Sercel told Insider.
TransAstra was recently awarded an $850,000 contract from NASA to explore the possibility of cleaning up space junk with a giant "capture bag" that the company has dubbed Flytrap, Sercel said.
"It's kind of like picking up trash on the side of the highway," Sercel said.
Only much, much more complex and expensive.
Earth's backyard is a giant dumpster
As humans expand into space, we're leaving a big mess.
The European Space Agency estimates over 330 million pieces of space debris are circling the Earth. Space debris can reach speeds up to 17,500 mph and pose a risk to astronauts, shuttles, and satellites.
TransAstra's Flytrap bags were initially developed to capture asteroids that, in the future, could be mined for rare elements, Sercel said.
But the more Sercel and the team looked into asteroid mining, the more they "became aware of the space junk problem, and we thought this is a really good solution for cleaning up orbital debris," Sercel told Insider. READ MORE...
