Space junk is everywhere, and it's high time that someone takes charge to clean it up. And Switzerland is that someone: the country is building CleanSpace One, the first in a family of "janitor" satellites to clean up space.
To be launched as soon as three to five years from now, CleanSpace One will rendezvous with one of two defunct objects in orbit, either the Swisscube picosatellite, or its cousin TIsat, both 1,000 cubic centimeters (61 cubic inches) in size. When the janitor satellite reaches its target, it will extend a grappling arm, grab it and then plunge into Earth’s atmosphere, burning up itself and the space junk during re-entry.
Think of it as the WALL-E of satellites (why it kind of looks like it, too): Link
have you ever seen a roomba? no tweezers. I'm sure the engineers of a government space program have this figured out a little better than the rest of us.
Your rocket idea is somewhat used now. The U.S. now requires satellites to move into either a "graveyard orbit" or de-orbit and burn up into the atmosphere, thus reducing junk in the congested orbital slots. The premise is the same in that the satellite is required to carry enough fuel to do the job once it's near the end of life. However, if something fails before the end of life that would prevent decommissioning, you're still stuck with a big useless satellite.
Oh that's a swell idea, let's make more debris and fling it all over the place. The problem with the explosive idea is that is will not fully consume the space junk, just make it smaller and give it a higher rate of speed.
Or one rocket which they fire at the end sending it back to earth to burn in the atmosphere?
In order to pick up a tiny crumb, you have to use a thusand-dollar set of tweezers, and then throw both the crumb and the tweezers away. New crumb, new tweezers.
I know of no better solution but this one still strikes be as anything but efficient.
Plus the rocket that fires it into orbit . sure that doesn't leave more debris behind than the sattelite is removing?