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Orbital Prime Garbage Collectors Active Debris Remediation

Orbital Prime, a program launched by the US Space Force, wants to reduce orbital debris. They're looking for earth-orbiting garbage collectors.

Recently, it has launched a program, called Orbital Prime, under the U.S. Space Force that would give companies seed money to develop the technology needed to clean up space. In the first round of the program, companies would win awards of $250,000, with as much as $1.5 million in a second round of funding. The program would culminate with a test demonstration in orbit.

In a video posted online advertising the program, Gen. David Thompson, the Space Force’s vice chief of space operations, said the Pentagon tracks more than 40,000 objects in space the size of a fist or larger. But he said there are at least 10 times as many smaller objects in orbit that the Pentagon can’t reliably track.

“This debris and associated congestion threaten the long-term sustainability of the space domain,” he said. “It demands action.”

(msn.com)

Consider the skydozer from A Little Further Up The Fox... (1987) by George M. Ewing:

Marge’s brother, Danny, had been flying a Skydozer, towing space junk and dead satellites out of equatorial orbit to clear a path for the Moravec

If the Pentagon is looking for suggestions, here's quite a list:

  - Terminator Tether - EDT Solution To Space Debris Update
  - NanoTerminator Prevents Annoying Space Debris Build-Up
  - Debris Cloud From Chinese ASAT A Menace To Space Lanes
  - Space Debris Cleanup Suggestions Ignored
  - ESA Space Claw To Grab Space Junk
  - Laser Thruster 'Tractor Beams' For Space Junk
  - Space Junk-Eating Pod-Craft
  - CleanSpace One Goal: De-Orbit Space Debris
  - Space Debris Cleanup - Use Harpoons Or Gas Clouds?
  - Could Ground-Based Lasers De-Orbit Space Junk?
  - Australians To Zap Space Junk Ala Arthur C. Clarke
  - Tracking Spinning Space Junk
  - Zap Space Debris With Telescope Laser On ISS
  - New Laser Space Debris Clearing More Subtle Than Clarke's
  - Nifty New SDS Space Debris Sensor For ISS
  - Elon Musk Tweets Versions Of Clarke's Operation Cleanup
  - Starlink Satellites Leading Edge On-Orbit Debris Mitigation

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/23/2022)

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