Space junk is a looming problem for humanity — the limited amount of orbital territory available for most modern applications is becoming so full of disused or damaged equipment that collisions are becoming harder and harder to prevent. The situation is probably not quite as “one bump and we’re done for” terrible as some have posited, since there have been some deliberate and accidental collisions that thankfully did not cause a cascading communications apocalypse. Still, it’s encouraging to see a rapidly advancing project from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) called Clean Space One, which aims to grab the university’s own “CubeSat” in a Pac-Man-like maw and drag it down to be destroyed in the atmosphere.

CubeSats are tiny, single-purpose orbiting devices that are deployed in batches by a much larger launch vehicle. They’re just 10 centimeters on a side (a liter in volume), and contain only the components that are absolutely necessary to their function. Their low cost and launch weight have seen them quickly gain ground in the chronically cash-strapped space science industry, but that very popularity may exacerbate the problem of overcrowding in orbit. EPFL launched a CubeSat of its own in 2009, called SwissCube, and as it approaches the inevitable end of its life-cycle, EPFL researchers are taking the initiative in designing a way to clear it from space.

SwissCube has been in operation for many times longer than its initially projected mission length of less than a year, but even the sturdy little atmospheric camera can’t go on working forever. The very concept of a CubeSat means it doesn’t have room to house a propulsion system of its own, so if you want to clear one from orbit, you’ll need to design a separate rendezvous satellite to do that job itself — one that can safely destroy the CubeSat without risking any unintended, catastrophic bounces.

In that spirit, the team has now settled on a capture design for Clean Space One: a “Pac-Man” conical net that can quickly close around SwissCube and secure it so it can be dragged down into the atmosphere on a trajectory bound for fiery destruction.

Just like the real Pac-Man, Clean Space One has just a single eye, an advanced sensor capable of handling the unique challenges of CubeSat capture. Not the least of these is that SwissCube is so small and inconsistently reflective that its exact speed and rotation are difficult to measure. With a high dynamic range camera that can pick up both the sharp bloom of intense reflection and the dark spaces in between them, the space janitor can approach safely, without knocking SwissCube off course. The net has to envelop SwissCube in one quick motion, so the CubeSat doesn’t hit the back of the net and then bounce right back out of its reach.

One obvious problem with this, as a prelude to a large-scale orbital cleaning initiative, is that Clean Space One is actually lost as a normal part of its mission. CubeSats won’t remain popular if their low initial cost is offset by a large later cleanup expense, and since Clean Space One is terminal in nature, it can’t be reused. That tradeoff makes sense to EPFL, which views the project as being as educational as it is practical, but for industry and even more prolific CubeSat-launching universities, something more economical will likely be required. Still, when Clean Space One launches in 2018, it will have the potential to alert a wide segment of society to the problems posed by short-sighted satellite policy.

EPFL scientists, of course, aren’t the only ones working on ways to head off the dreaded Kessler effect, in which one collision creates enough debris to cause more collisions, which in turn create a cascade that wipes out a good portion of our space technology. The Japanese space agency has experimented with electrodynamic tethers to magnetically attract small bits of metal in orbit, but this approach has only been projected to be able to pick up marble-sized objects or smaller. NASA has even looked into using lasers — but Clean Space One seems like the most realistic attempt to de-orbit satellites of any real size and mass.

It’s still unclear how we might we get rid of much larger satellites, the full-scale communications and surveillance rigs — but since they’re so packed with useful tech, they might actually be better to scavenge and recycle, than to destroy outright. There are still no concrete solutions, but with pro-active efforts like this from EPFL, a comprehensive space clean-up regime might not be all that far out.