{"id":1235721,"date":"2025-02-27T20:06:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T01:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1235721"},"modified":"2025-02-27T20:06:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T01:06:41","slug":"astroscale-aced-the-worlds-first-rendezvous-with-a-piece-of-space-junk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1235721","title":{"rendered":"Astroscale aced the world\u2019s first rendezvous with a piece of space junk"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>There&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v2H1s9gj5DA\">scene in the film<\/a> <em>Interstellar\u00a0<\/em>where Matthew McConaughey&#8217;s character flies his spaceplane up to meet a mothership spinning out of control. The protagonist rises to the challenge with a polished piece of piloting and successfully links up with his objective.<\/p>\n<p>Real life, of course, isn&#8217;t quite this dramatic. Slow down that spin to a tranquil tumble, and replace McConaughey&#8217;s hand on the joystick with the autonomous wits of a computer, and you&#8217;ll arrive at an approximation of what a Japanese company Astroscale has accomplished within the last year.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it&#8217;s an impressive feat of engineering and orbital dynamics. Astroscale&#8217;s ADRAS-J mission became the first spacecraft (at least in the unclassified world) to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit. This particular object, a derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket, has been in orbit since 2009. It&#8217;s one of about 2,000 spent rocket bodies circling the Earth and one of more than 45,000 objects in orbit tracked by US Space Command.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/space\/2025\/02\/astroscale-aced-the-worlds-first-rendezvous-with-a-piece-of-space-junk\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/space\/2025\/02\/astroscale-aced-the-worlds-first-rendezvous-with-a-piece-of-space-junk\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a scene in the film Interstellar\u00a0where Matthew McConaughey&#8217;s character flies his spaceplane up to meet a mothership spinning out of control. The protagonist rises to the challenge with a polished piece of piloting and successfully links up with his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1235721\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology","category-unfiltered-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1235721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1235721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1235721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1235721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}