Crisp Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 A junk harpoon on a mission to clean up space British engineers are developing a harpoon to clear up space junk, including defunct satellites and used rocket boosters threatening other satellites and astronauts on the International Space Station. Having considered several different methods for grabbing and returning bits of orbital debris to Earth, engineers have settled on a solution right out of the pages of Moby-Dick. Since the start of the space race, around 4,900 rocket launches have left more than 23,000 pieces of space junk in orbit. They include upper stages of rocket boosters, broken-down weather and communication satellites, and tools dropped by NASA astronauts on space-walks. But with typical speeds of 25,000 kilometres an hour for most pieces of space debris, even small objects the size of nuts and bolts represent a major hazard to other satellites or even manned space missions. Simplicity "The harpoon has a great advantage in that it's simple," said Jaime Reed of Astrium UK, which is developing the technology."If we keep it simple and low cost we can capture lots of space junk in a single mission." Until recently the threat from space junk was seen as largely theoretical. But in 2009, a disabled Russian weather satellite collided with an American telecommunications satellite worth tens of millions of pounds. What is more, the collision itself created around 6,000 new pieces of debris. "The 2009 collision really raised awareness in the community," said Mr Reed, pointing out that orbital space is a finite resource: "all that junk up there could damage operational satellites, so people are now beginning to think about cleaning up the environment to ensure future generations can use it for the everyday services that we rely on." Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hum Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 Cool -- but my patented junk cleaner is way better. :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devn00b Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 Wouldn't harpooning an object create more small debris that you cant really harpoon, and that in turn would be a danger? The Evil Overlord and Hum 2 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hum Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 ^ They may eventually figure that out. :laugh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 Altius Space Machines "Sticky Boom" uses electroadhesion to grab objects as small as a paint chip to as large as 20+ metric tons. Material doesn't matter. http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_09_06_2012_p04-02-492510.xml http://www.altius-space.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Growled Member Posted April 19, 2013 Member Share Posted April 19, 2013 Now all we need is a Captain Ahab in outer space to do the deed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torolol Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 damn, this cleaning would allow meteor routes unaffected so they wont crashes into earth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tuishimi Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 We need a broad tractor / repulsor beam that can just sweep through the debris. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soldier1st Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 Cool -- but my patented junk cleaner is way better. :p Are you serious about the "Patented" part? if so prove it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FloatingFatMan Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 We need a team like the one in the Planetes anime series. Space garbage men! :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slugsie Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 I don't think the main problem is getting hold of the bits of junk, it's just getting to them. Especially if you plan to get to several in one mission - which would be necessary to be financially viable. If you just use the typical orbit of the ISS (402-424km above the Earth according to Wikipedia) that gives you a volume of space of roughly 260 Billion cubic kilometers (62 Billion cubic miles). 23,000 pieces of junk in that space is one piece of junk per 11 Million cubic kilometers! It's worse than that of course because the junk is spread much higher up. If you just consider Low Earth Orbit (up to around 2000km) that is an volume of 1.1 Trillion cubic kilometers, for a piece roughly once every 50 Million cubic kilometers. When you look at those numbers, you start to understand how ridiculously difficult this task becomes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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