Japan’s space junk cleaning mission, led by Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has achieved a significant milestone in its quest to clean up space debris. The initiative, known as the Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration, involved collaboration with Japanese company Astroscale to launch a satellite named ADRAS-J.
The successful mission involved making a close approach to a target and capturing continuous images at a required quality and data volume. In late May, the team successfully observed the upper stage of a H-IIA rocket launched in 2009, which carried the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite into space. The images captured by ADRAS-J from a distance of just 50 meters showcase the progress in developing commercial space cleaning services.
Meanwhile, India’s re-elected government has appointed a new minister to oversee key technology portfolios. Ashwini Vaishnaw retained his position in the Cabinet, managing Railways, Information and Broadcasting, and Electronics and Information Technology. Jitin Prasada was appointed as a minister of state in the Electronics and Information Technology portfolio, following the unexpected exit of the previous minister of state, Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
In a separate incident, an Indian national who previously worked for Singaporean services company NCS has been sentenced to jail for deleting virtual machines after being terminated from his job. The individual, who had returned to India after his dismissal, accessed the company’s systems and deleted multiple virtual machines in a test environment. Authorities discovered evidence that he had searched for scripts to delete resources, resulting in a sentence of two years and eight months in jail.
On a different note, Hong Kong’s government has introduced a unique approach to detect pollution using a robot dog. Environmental officers traditionally relied on their sense of smell to identify pollution. The robodog, as explained by Environmental Protection Department senior officer Law Chi-wing, offers an objective method to detect pollution, showcasing innovative solutions to environmental challenges.
