If you have a picnic you take your rubbish with you when you go.
Now a team of Florida University students is applying the same logic to space. Cleaning up what’s been left behind.
The team is refining a satellite-like cube that picks up space trash with the help of integrated robots.
Trash is brought closer to the earth where it is burned up by the atmospheric drag.
The device is powered by a pull-out solar sail. Radiation pressure either propels it or slows it down depending on the sail’s position relative to the sun.
The technology could mean the 27,000 pieces of orbital debris currently circling the earth at 40,000 km/h simply dissolve in the air.
