Daily Times

A harpoon flung from a satellite has successfully captured a piece of pretend space junk, like a whale. The British-led experiment is part of an effort to clean up debris in orbit. The University of Surrey’s Guglielmo Aglietti said Friday that the steel-tipped harpoon scored a bull’s-eye last Friday. The harpoon – no bigger than a writing pen – pierced an aluminum panel the size of a table tennis racket attached to the end of a satellite boom. The distance was just 1.5 metres, but researchers were thrilled.

Published in Daily Times, February 17^th 2019.