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EPFL's CleanSpace One Satellite Will "Eat" Space Junk
Zothecula writes: Working with Geneva's University of Applied Science and Signal Processing 5 Laboratory, Swiss research institute EPFL has announced details of a plan to capture its tiny SwissCube satellites by using a new spacecraft outfitted with a conical net. Called "CleanSpace One" the team hopes that their "Pac-Man" solution will capture the old satellite. Gizmag reports: "...SwissCube's spinning action will make it more difficult to image, as its surfaces will alternately be brilliantly sunlit or hidden in shadow. That's why CleanSpace One's computer vision system will be running algorithms that account for variables such as the angle of the sun, the dimensions of the target, the speed at which that target is moving, and the rate at which CleanSpace One itself is spinning. High dynamic range cameras will also allow it to simultaneously expose for both bright and dark surfaces."
I'm no rocket scientist but this is nuts. We are going to launch some satellite, have it capture another one, then deorbit both of them? What a waste! A waste of energy and technology to launch such hardware just to throw it away. Not to mention that orbiting broken satellites might have some useful components we might consider trying to recycle. A big dish antenna is heavy, but could conceivably be reused and save launch weight on the next satellite.
These larger pieces of space junk are easy to track, few in number, and thus are not that dangerous. What we really need is a solution that allows us to start clearing out the smaller pieces of junk. Maybe by just nudging them around until they are in decaying orbits, or vaporizing them using lasers. If we are going to talk pie in the sky, let's do something more useful...(and perhaps more likely to be successful.)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Figure out a cheap way to make a low-density material aerogel in space. Make a large quantity of it as a single mass (doesn't have to be a cube - could be a sphere) and put it into an eccentric orbit which intersects some of the orbits with the most junk. The stuff is good at catching small high-velocity particles without fragmenting. The high surface area to mass ratio means its orbit will decay a lot quicker than regular junk. So put it into a (relatively) high orbit where it'll collect junk for a few years, before aerodynamic drag degrades its orbit and it (and the junk it's caught) burns up on re-entry.