Its time to bring in the trash.

Junk satellites can pose risks to other objects in Earth’s orbit. Startups are testing out ways to tidy up, from magnets to robotic tentacles

The ClearSpace-1, a 500-kilogram spacecraft equipped with four robotic tentacles, is locked in to launch in 2025. Funded by ESA and backed by enterprises in several European countries including Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Poland, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Romania, ClearSpace’s project was the winning idea after ESA issued a callout in 2019 for experts to pitch a space debris removal solution

For its first mission, the ClearSpace-1 will aim to capture the upper part of an ESA-owned craft known as VESPA (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter), a 112-kilogram object about the size of a small satellite that was launched in 2013 and eventually left in “gradual disposal” orbit at an altitude of about 800 kilometres by 660 kilometres