DARPA Aims To Reuse Space Junk

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."

Comments

good idea

[fermion]

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.

Re:good idea

[cpu6502]

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.

Re:good idea

[yesterdaystomorrow]

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.

Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain

[idontgno]

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.

Re:Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain

[AdrianKemp]

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.

Re:Overheard in Cheyenne Mountain

[0123456]

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.