As a teenager in 1988, Nobu Okada traveled from Japan to attend camp at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. While there he met Mamoru Mori, Japan's first astronaut, who gave him a handwritten message: "Space is waiting for your challenge." More than 25 years later, Okada is preparing to tackle one of the most vexing challenges facing space mission planners: the increasing amount of debris in heavily traveled orbits. Through Astroscale, the Singapore-based company he founded in 2013, Okada plans to conduct a spaceflight mission in 2016 called In-situ Debris Environmental Awareness (IDEA) to gather detailed information on the tiny satellite and rocket fragments that pose a threat to spacecraft. In 2017, Astroscale plans to launch its first Active Debris Removal by Astroscale (ADRAS) mission to demonstrate tech- nology to clean up debris.
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机译：1988年，十几岁的冈田信伸（Nobu Okada）从日本出发，前往阿拉巴马州宇航局（NASA）的马歇尔太空飞行中心（Marshall Space Flight Center）训练营。在那里，他遇到了日本第一位宇航员森森守（Mamoru Mori），他给他手写了一条信息：“太空正在等待您的挑战。” 25多年后，冈田正准备解决太空任务计划者面临的最棘手的挑战之一：在行进轨道上不断增加的碎片。冈田计划通过他于2013年在新加坡成立的Astroscale公司，计划在2016年执行一项名为“就地碎片环境意识”（IDEA）的太空飞行任务，以收集有关对航天器构成威胁的微小卫星和火箭碎片的详细信息。 2017年，Astroscale计划启动其首个“ Astroscale主动清除碎片”（ADRAS）任务，以展示清除碎片的技术。
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