Space? Eh, that’s just a bunch of garbage…

Wouldn’t you just know it, those crazy kids over at DARPA are up to their regular shenanigans again. So what’s on the fix-it list this time? Space. Well, not space itself of course but all the crap we humans have managed to lob up there in the past couple of decades. Turns out there is enough clutter comprised of dead satellites, abandoned spacecraft, lost tools from spacewalks and possibly my grandfathers 87 Cadillac to have the global space community on alert regarding the safety of the International Space Station and plenty of other key pieces of our digital infrastructure up in space.

If you are a Futurama fan like myself, you may well remember the episode where humanity decided to pack up all the garbage on earth and blast it into deep space via a rocket. You may also remember that the whole plan came back to bite them in their futuristic ass. While we may not have piled everything up in one mighty heap we have cluttered the sky piece by piece over the years. Enter the “Electronic Debris Eliminator” or “EDDE.” Here is a snippet of explanation from the fine folks over at popsci.com:

“The Electrodynamic Debris Eliminator, or EDDE, is the brainchild of engineers at Star Inc. and ostensibly the DARPA backers that are funding its development. In practice, EDDE would zip around low earth orbit snaring bits of space garbage in its many nets where they cannot be a menace to other orbiting spacecraft. Star’s CEO estimates that over seven years, 12 EDDE craft could clean up all 2,465 objects over 4.5 pounds that are currently being tracked through LEO.Once EDDE has a piece of space junk cornered, it can either hurl it into the South Pacific where it has little chance of doing any harm, or put it on a trajectory to burn up during re-entry. Or, Star insists, the pieces of junk could be recycled right there in space to create raw materials for the construction of future orbiting space stations or satellites.”

Sounds pretty cool right? Things that sound pretty cool in tech are usually decades off right? Wrong. The engineers over at Star Inc. are working with usable tech right now and have a test flight scheduled for 2013. Yowsah. Here’s hoping for the best in the prospect of keeping the heavens as clutter free as possible. And just think, if this thing works it means you can feel better about that time you took the malfunctioning TIVO outside and slung it into what surely was low earth orbit. Just sayin.