Critics scoffed at the buzz around Amazon’s drone deliveries, but in Switzerland a company called Matternet is going live with actual everyday robotic deliveries, working with Swiss Post in both urban and rural areas.

The Matternet ONE can carry a few points up to around a dozen miles on a single charge, perfect for small but speedy delivery needs. Going live in a test period this summer, this proof of concept is designed to “to clarify the legal framework, consider local conditions and explore the technical and business capabilities of the drones.”

While this will be the first large-scale, developed-world deployment, Matternet already has extensive experience in developing nations, delivering emergency and medical supplies in Haiti, for instance.

The company is ambitious, aiming to supply drones, batteries, software, charging stations and landing pads to help unmanned flying vehicles reach remote places – and they have already flown more drone hours than any other company in the world. They are working on improvements on various fronts, including better awareness systems (detect-and-avoid) as well as more efficient models of drone able to carry more and fly further.

The post Swiss Postal Service Deploying First Real Drone Deliveries first appeared on Gajitz.

Space debris has been a growing problem for decades as every space mission leaves at least a few pieces of trash behind. As a result of this junk being left in orbit, there is now an increasingly alarming amount of potentially dangerous stuff in the Earth’s orbit. The Swiss Space Center plans to take out the trash with a helpful satellite called CleanSpace One.

Space junk is such a serious concern because an impact with even a teeny-tiny piece of detritus could spell disaster for passing spacecraft or satellites. This, in turn, would make even more space junk that would just exacerbate the problem.

However, CleanSpace One has a challenging job ahead of it. When it gets a lock on a piece of space debris, it has to match its orbit to that of the junk. Not surprisingly, this isn’t super-easy to do. The “janitor” satellite then has to grab and lock onto the junk and drag it down into the Earth’s atmosphere, where both the junk and the satellite will burn up upon re-entry.

The Swiss Space Center has plans that stretch far beyond their first clean-up satellite. They want to become the leaders in the field of space cleaning. The satellites won’t come cheap, but they could eventually save untold millions of dollars by keeping potentially devastating junk out of future spacecrafts’ way. The predicted launch date for the program is somewhere around 2017-2018.

The post Janitor Satellite Will Clean Up the Space Junk Around Earth first appeared on Gajitz.