The US Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a new set of regulations by which to mitigate the occurrence and proliferation of so-called space-junk left in the wakes of commercial space-launches undertaken by concerns the likes of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab. The agency has drafted a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) requiring operators of commercial space-launches to assume responsibility for disposing of the upper-stages of spent launch-vehicles.
The United States has retrieved rocks and dust from an asteroid and transported such back to Earth. The achievement occasioned the success of NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security—Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. A capsule containing regolith collected from the asteroid 101955 Bennu landed in a targeted area of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City at 08:52 MDT on the morning of Sunday, 24 September 2023.
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