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DARPA Aims To Reuse Space Junk

Posted by Soulskill on from the cannibal-satellites-dueling-for-survival dept.

CowboyRobot writes "Space junk has increased to the point where pieces of it are colliding and breaking into smaller pieces. The problem is now so bad that NASA has had to modify the design of satellites to protect them from flying debris. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to turn disabled satellites and their components, including antennas and solar arrays, into functioning systems. They are hosting a conference on June 26 to explore how to build 'refurbished' satellites from already-orbiting material for less than what it would cost to build them from scratch and launch them from the surface of the Earth."

27 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Flying magnets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Flying magnets?

    1. Re:Flying magnets by PaulBu · · Score: 2

      Sure that would work!

      Make a coil of either metal, cool it down to 0.4K (Ti) or 1.1K (Al, which is probably what you would use), apply some current -- here is your superconducting magnet, sucking in Iron, Chrome, Nickel, etc... -- unfortunately, not Al or Ti, which satellites are usually made of... ;-(

      While I am at that, can I suggest that new-fangled mid-80s thing, called hight-Tc superconductor? :-)

      Paul B.

  2. good idea by fermion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It costs several dollars a gram to get it up there, it only makes sense to try to recoup some value. Reusing it does not nearly have the security concerns of forcing it down and burning it up.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    1. Re:good idea by cpu6502 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't see how this is workable. The space junk is spread-out across thousands of miles, and you'd waste a lot of fuel moving around trying to collect it all. Plus, what do you do once you have your pile of trash in your space vehicle? There's no engineers/technicians to assemble it into something usable.

      A wiser course would be to outlaw leaving junk in space..... if you send a rocket into space, make sure to deorbit the spent stages immediately. If your satellite is EOL, then deorbit that too.

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    2. Re:Good Idea by johanwanderer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There's a non trivial amount of fuel involved in changing an orbital object's speed, inclination, or trajectory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_maneuver

    3. Re:good idea by raymansean · · Score: 2

      The cost to launch DOD satellites is usually a small percentage of the over budget for the build of the satellite.
      I am having a hard time with how we get things that were not meant to be interchangeable to link up in orbit to take on a new mission. Now if we could build a WALL-E (SPACE-E) that is capable of catching, manipulating, disassembling and construction of a new satellite that would be pretty impressive. However by the time we develop that technology we will have spent a considerable amount of money.
      Perhaps the path forward is to develop satellites that can either connect (dock if you will) to the ones currently in orbit and use some of the preexisting equipment on board to perform a new mission, or build new satellites with a "SPACE-Port" that allows future satellites to dock with it and use the host's equipment. Right now I see the problem on the order of trying to connect a CDC 6060 with a K Computer.

      --
      insert inflammatory comment here!
    4. Re:good idea by yesterdaystomorrow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It costs several dollars a gram to get it up there...

      The trouble is that most of that cost isn't lifting it to altitude, but getting it moving at the right velocity for the orbit you want. If you put some sort of recycling device in orbit, almost all of the junk that it encounters will be moving at high velocity relative to your device's orbital velocity. Speed will tend to be similar, but direction will be all over the place. Changing the velocity of either the device or the junk is difficult.

      Lead is a reasonably valuable metal, but stationing yourself in no man's land between two armies and recycling the bullets that come at you seems a difficult way to obtain it.

    5. Re:good idea by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      Who can take your trash out?
      Stomp it down for you?
      Shake the plastic bag and do the twisty thingy too?
      THE GARBAGE MAN!!
      Oh the Garbage Man can
      The Garbage Man can and he does it with a smile and never judges you.
      Who can take this diaper?
      I don't mind at all
      Who can clean me up before the big policeman's ball?
      THE GARBAGE MAN
      yes the garbage man can
      The sanitation folks are jolly friendly blokes courteous
      and easy going they mop up when your over flowing and tell you when
      your arse is showing
      Who can.....
      Who can.....
      Who can.....
      Who can.....
      THE GARBAGE MAN CAN!!
      'Cause he's Homer Simpson Man
      HE CLEANS THE WORRRRLD FOOOORRR YOOOUUU

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    6. Re:Good Idea by AdrianKemp · · Score: 2

      In fairness, DARPA isn't exactly about tomorrow's technology. They're about next decade's technology.

      I see only two seriously hard parts to this (which makes it easy by DARPA standards)

      1) capturing space debris tumbling and tossing about -- there was a recent contest announcement about just that, I forget if it was DARPA issued or not.

      2) moving about in orbit without lugging the fuel to do it up with you. It sounds nigh impossible, but then that's what they *do*.

      So you're absolutely right, and if it was any other department that was talking about developing this tech I'd call BS. But this sort of thing is right up their alley.

    7. Re:good idea by cornjones · · Score: 2

      A wiser course would be to outlaw leaving junk in space..... if you send a rocket into space, make sure to deorbit the spent stages immediately. If your satellite is EOL, then deorbit that too.

      By who's authority would you outlaw something like that? how would you assign penalties to a chinese satellite that didn't deorbit properly? What about the thousands of objects already there? I think you need to head back to the drawing board. At least come up w/ sharks w/ laser beams or something cool..

    8. Re:good idea by I_am_Jack · · Score: 2

      And just how would such a "law" be enforced anyhow?

      Right now it's solely being enforced by the Law of Gravity. I'm afraid, despite how necessary DARPA's proposal is, that it will be subsequently governed by the Law of Diminishing Returns.

    9. Re:good idea by SlithyMagister · · Score: 2

      A wiser course would be to outlaw leaving junk in space.....

      I was tempted to mod this funny.
      There is a common misconception amongst law-abiding people that making something illegal will change other people's behaviour, because they themselves change their behavour in response to a change in law.

      As society becomes increasingly fragmented, the fraction of the earth's population that could be described as "law-abiding" is decreasing rapidly, and the process is further accelerated by governments that bow to the pressure of special interests.

      Examples of laws that are defied or ignored abound.
      Here on Slashdot we tend to revile copyright laws, and other IP laws.
      Others openly defy laws controlling substances -- drugs, alcohold, tobacco etc.

      Why on earth -- or above it -- would anyone abide by a "law" that would be ultimately unenforceable?

  3. Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain by idontgno · · Score: 5, Interesting

    on a bright spring day in 2020:

    Dammit. I think the Chinese just refurbished our operating commsats and used the parts in one of their early warning satellites.

    Seriously. If you can do this with abandoned satellites, can you do it with not-quite abandoned ones? The only difference between junking a car at the junkyard and stripping a car on the street (besides location) is the fact that someone still owns the car on the street.

    We're gonna wind up with satellites with no radio, no trim, and up on cinderblocks.

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    1. Re:Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To continue your analogy... a car in the junkyard likely has nobody keeping an eye on it and has no alarms to go off if you try to force entry. A car on the street likely has the owner not too far away and will probably have some kind of alarm (if not security, then something operational that will scream if interfered with).

    2. Re:Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain by AdrianKemp · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wonder if someone at the table when the first satellites were being designed brought up the issue of (physical access) russian hacking once they were in orbit...

      I imagine they probably did, huh? The paranoia at the time was incredible.

    3. Re:Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That is one reason why the Shuttle was designed to have such large wings, to handle landing from polar orbit per USAF requirements. The Shuttle would launch from Vandenburg, complete one orbit, grab a Soviet bird over the US/Eastern Pacific (out of sight of Soviet observatories), complete another orbit and land at Vandenburg again. The problem with launching from Vandenburg is that there's nowhere to the West of it to land without going to Hawaii, so the Shuttle would need the lift to glide back to Vandenburg upon reentry or else everyone would know something was up when the Shuttle was carried back.

    4. Re:Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you can do this with abandoned satellites, can you do it with not-quite abandoned ones?

      Satellites are often abandoned due to running out of fuel. I've read that a number of new satellites are being fitted with a standard fuel connector so they could be refueled at some point in the future; no such 'tanker' exists yet but if the market is big enough someone may build it.

      From what I remember another problem is that solar panel output declines over time, but that's probably a less important issue.

    5. Re:Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain by moderatorrater · · Score: 2

      I'd be surprised if this isn't a regular topic of conversation today. You're launching an incredibly expensive piece of equipment, often with national security repercussions. If you're not considering the physical security of it, then you're probably not doing your job.

  4. Starting point towards asteroids by Neil+Watson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Start with mining orbital junk before heading out to the asteroids. Must be plenty of useful metals and minerals to recover via automatic factories.

    --
    UNIX/Linux Consulting
    1. Re:Starting point towards asteroids by squidflakes · · Score: 2

      Imagine the problems though, of trying to break apart systems that were never designed to be maintained, especially in microgravity.

      At least with cars and motorcycles the engineers designed them to have parts replaced. How many comsats were designed in the same way?

  5. the inevitable movie... by Tumbleweed · · Score: 2

    "Dude, Where's My Satellite?"

  6. One word: Backdoor by Maximum+Prophet · · Score: 2

    Because if they do, we will have backdoors into their spy satellites. Plugging a found USB drive you find in your company parking lot into your computer is an iffy proposition, plugging something into your satellite is just foolhardy. Best case, it's a bomb, worst case it's a monitoring device.

    --
    All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
  7. Japanese already did it! by Tastecicles · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Planetes

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
    1. Re:Japanese already did it! by Tastecicles · · Score: 2

      There's visual hints in that show from very early on, that even in orbits at the same altitude, minor deviations in orbital trajectory can cause objects moving at the same speed to close at ludicrous speed (for a pair of objects in LEO, each travelling at 17,500mph, the maximum mutual closing speed is 35,000mph - they're head-on. Even at only slightly tangential orbits of a fraction of a degree apart, they will close pretty fast. Possibly too fast to detect visually before a collision. A venture such as this will require very precise tracking of the debris (ground based?) and very precise maneuvering of the recovery vehicle to avoid a high speed collision which for anything larger than a panel pin would be a mission ender).

      --
      Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  8. 2 + 2 = 5 by turgid · · Score: 2

    X-37B?

    What do you reckon?

    --
    Stick Men
  9. Anyone remember this? by BetaDays · · Score: 2

    Salvage 1 - the junkyard astronautics http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079847/

    --
    Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
  10. Avoiding the Kessler Syndrome by mcrbids · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The problem is simple, and was predicted long ago: In the Kessler Syndrome we have a cascading effect where every collision begets more collisions which create more, smaller bullets which impact... you see the cycle yet?

    We really, desperately need to do two things:

    1) Find a cheap way to collect the garbage.
    2) Find a cheap way to get to space.

    While rockets are nice and all, we really need something like a Space Elevator or a ground-based Launch Loop in order to commoditize space travel sufficiently that things like space-junk shielding can become the norm.

    Also, why is all this junk going in all directions? It would seem appropriate to coordinate the launches and orbits so that there are "tubes" of orbit where everything goes in more or less the same direction so that collisions don't occur.

    Aircraft do this - planes going east fly at odd elevations (11,000 feet, 13,000 feet, etc) and west at even elevations. (10,000, 12,000, etc) Why can't satellites?

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.