A California company seeking to pioneer asteroid mining has developed a device that will catch such rocks in space. 

TransAstra called its invention Capture Bag, which is inflatable and comes in different sizes depending on the object it will catch, including space junk. 

TransAstra founder Joel Sercel said the Capture Bag is made of kevlar and aluminum, is leak-proof and can be mounted on a carrier vehicle that will release it near a target, at which point the bag will inflate to make room for the object, CNN reports. 

A prototype was tested aboard the International Space Station in early October and in the next test it will try to actually capture an asteroid, according to CNN. 

The company wants the Capture Bag to catch the first asteroid by 2028 and extract large quantities of both precious and common metals from it. 

Meanwhile, a west London sewer had become a “fatberg” catcher of sorts. 

Thames Water, which supplies water to Greater London and treats wastewater from under the metropolitan area, found this out when utility workers cleared the sewer, located 10 meters beneath the street in Feltham, of 100 tons of a solid mass consisting mainly of wet wipes held together by fat, oil, and grease, according to BBC.

The blockage was extracted by blasting, chiselling, and sucking out the fatberg along 125 meters of pipes, BBC reports.

Following the fatberg removal from the sewer pipes, the British government signed into law a bill banning the sale of plastic wet wipes to prevent the pollution of waterways, its website announced on Tuesday. 

A UK Water Industry Research found that wet wipes contribute to 94 percent of sewer blockages, which cost water companies around £200 million to fix each year, a cost that is ultimately passed onto households through their water bills.