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Tiny Cube Drags Space Debris From Orbit
krou writes "A team from Surrey Space Centre has developed a device called a CubeSail, designed to be attached to satellites and rocket stages in order to drag space debris from orbit. CubeSail is a nanosatellite, weighing 3kg (6.6lb), and measures 10cm x 10cm x 30cm. Within its frame is a polymer sheet that unfurls itself once in space. 'The simple deployment mechanism features four metal strips that are wound under tension and will snap into a straight line when let go, pulling the sheet flat in the process.' The overall idea is that 'Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull the object out of the sky much faster than is normal.' Sir Martin Sweeting, the chairman of SSTL, who supported the research, said, 'We would be looking to put it on our own satellites and to put it on other people's spacecraft as well. We want this to be a standard, essential bolt-on item for a spacecraft; and that's why it's very important to make it small, because if it's too big it will interfere with the rest of the spacecraft.' The team is also hoping that CubeSail can act as a propulsion system, using 'solar sailing' to help satellites keep their orbits more efficiently."
Gah!
Am I the only one who read that as "Time Cube Drags Space Debris From Orbit"? Slashdot ows me a new monitor. This one's all covered in coffee now...
Maybe I'm not getting it, but it seems to me that the article says that the device is unfurled once the satellite reaches orbit, so it starts to decay the orbit immediately?
FTFS: "rocket stages in order to drag space debris from orbit"
The immediate deployment option is for things that immediatly become debris. A scheduled deployment would be used for satellite decomissioning.
You can't take the sky from me...
Someone tell these guys what a cube is.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
From what I read, it's not designed to take out entire satellites, but small debris that poses significant problems to existing satellites.
I don't respond to AC's.
Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull the object out of the sky much faster than is normal.
When I was younger, we called this "a parachute".
Ezekiel 23:20
"10cm x 10cm x 30cm"
what a cube !
Yes. 25 m^2 is a good bit of surface area. It's not going to stop these things in an instant, but it would certainly make their orbits decay much sooner.
This Weighted Companion Cube will accompany the satellites through space. Aparture Science is sure this will reduce the number of insane satellites in orbit.
It seems to me getting things into space is _really_ expensive. I would be much more impressed with a device that took space debris and dragged it all together. That way it could eventually be recycled in space. Instead of just burning it up.
Morpheus, God of Dreams.
From what I gather, so is significantly changing an orbit and you'd have to do that twice, one to get it to the recycling point and once more to get it to whereever you want to go. Also in lower orbits you need thrusters to stay up or your orbit will decay, which means you can't just dump them somewhere because there's a constant fuel cost. From what I gather this is for when they're out of thrusters and the orbit is decaying, to speed up the deorbit. Without doing more it'd come down anyway, just not so quickly so there'd be much more space junk up there.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
But first, the tranya.
There could be cubes the size of gorillas in there!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Theoretically that's a good idea, but then you need a whole industrial complex in space, we're talking smelting, refining, forming, assembling, QA, etc... I don't think there's enough debris up there to make all that worthwhile, and hopefully we will be generating less space debris in the future, not more, so it won't be getting any "better" for your space recycling idea.
Now if we ever really did move to large scale manufacturing in earth orbit, probably based around captured asteroids, then that sort of scheme might be worthwhile, particularly for refining extremely rare materials that may have been used in satellite construction, but that day is really far off.