Reaching for the stars and cleaning up in space

2020-12-13 02:45:09

(MENAFN- Swissinfo)

Scientific curiosity has to begin with wonder. For the entire history of humankind, we have looked up at the night sky in wonder. For most people, it begins and ends there. And then there are the others, those who instinctively question why and how. If they're lucky, they can dedicate their lives to understanding more about the universe – and bring the answers back to the rest of us.

This content was published on December 13, 2020 - 14:15 December 13, 2020 - 14:15 Clare O'Dea

Clare reports on scientific developments in Switzerland

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I admit that I am one of the uncurious. I've never been excited by the topic of space and I take for granted all the amazing progress that's been achieved in my lifetime. The involvement of satellites alone in our daily lives is mind-boggling but I hardly give it any thought!

That's why I'm handing over to my colleague Marc-André Miserez , swissinfo.ch's resident space groupie who has been writing about the topic for a long time, and bringing back the answers to underserving readers like me.

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Marc-André:

'Switzerland is going from strength to strength in space . In 2009, I followed the adventure of Swisscube, the first 100% Swiss-made satellite, not much bigger than a milk carton. Ten years later, the Swiss could take credit for a space telescope (CHEOPS) and a joint Nobel Prize, awarded to astrophysicists Michel Mayor and Didier Quéloz for their work finding exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars other than our sun.

The latest star in Swiss space research is ClearSpace, which has recently been making headlines with at least four world firsts: The European Space Agency (ESA) buys a turnkey mission, pays more than CHF100 million to a start-up, the start-up is going to build the first collector of space debris and this will be the first satellite to try to remove a piece of space junk from orbit in a non-controlled flight.

That should be the beginning of a long series because it is high time to clean up the great junk highway that the Earth's orbit has become, putting in danger all the spacecraft that travel there. (Here's my story about the world's first space 'garbage truck').

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