Space Junk-Fighting Cable Fails To Deploy (newscientist.com)

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Space Junk-Fighting Cable Fails To Deploy (newscientist.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday February 12, 2017 @03:34AM from the space-junk-fail dept.

New Scientist reports: It's a rubbish start for the world's first space clean-up experiment. A cable designed to drag space junk out of orbit has failed to deploy from a Japanese spacecraft... A 700-metre-long metal cable was fitted to an unmanned spacecraft called Kounotori 6, which was on its way back to Earth after delivering supplies to the International Space Station. The cable was meant to unfurl from the spacecraft, at which point an electric current would pass along its length. The idea was that the current would interact with the Earth's magnetic field, creating a drag that pulled the spacecraft out of orbit. The spacecraft would then tumble into our atmosphere and become incinerated... However, Kounotori 6 was unable to release the cable to test its junk-removing potential, and JAXA could not fix the glitch before the spacecraft returned to Earth's atmosphere this morning... "Releasing a cable may seem simple, but nothing in space is simple," says Sean Tuttle at the University of New South Wales in Australia... The test's failure should be seen as a setback rather than a nail in the coffin for junk-removing cables, Tuttle says.
rickyslashdot writes: Because of the simplicity of this system, it is bound to be tested again -- hopefully sooner than later... This process is inherently safer than using rocket engines (to be attached to the junk), and is much less of a 'mass-to-orbit' cost, since it only requires a grappling system, and a spool of wire/cable. Hopefully, there will be a follow-up / re-try in the near future for this orbital debris clean-up process.

55 comments

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Why do people not understand by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 03:43 · Score: 0

how to use the hyphen? By writing "junk-fighting", you create a new compound word.
"space junk" is already understood, so you don't need to clarify with a hyphen, and if you did, you'd write "space-junk fighting".
As it is, the headline means a cable in space is junk fighting, without the specific case of "space junk", because the hyphen overrides "space junk", and becomes junk fighting in space.
For shit's sake.
1. Re:Why do people not understand by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 04:16 · Score: 0
  
  Oh. I thought it was about fighting space's junk. Or possibly people fighting with their junk in space. Or maybe it was about (space junk) (fighting cable), a sort of orbital nunchuck. In any event, "space junk fighting cable" isn't a concept that comes trippingly to the mind, it needs some contextual help, unless it's being used as a passphrase.
2. Re:Why do people not understand by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 04:21 · Score: 0
  
  Then it should have been space-junk fighting cable. "Space junk" without a hyphen is clear on its own on Slashdot, which is, after all, Space Nutter Central Command.
3. Re: Why do people not understand by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 04:30 · Score: 0
  
  Definitely my new passphrase for everything
4. Re:Why do people not understand by SandorZoo · 2017-02-12 05:15 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Being Slashdot, we could use parentheses instead:
  ((space junk) fighting) cable = "a cable that fights space-junk"
  (space junk) (fighting cable) = "a fighting-cable that is space-junk"
  (space (junk fighting)) cable = "a space-ready cable intended for fighting junk"
  space (junk (fighting cable)) = "a broken fighting-cable found in space
  space ((junk fighting) cable) = "a TV cable channel showing junk-fighting tournaments that is broadcast to space"
  I had to struggle with some of those...
5. Re:Why do people not understand by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:27 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks, I think your use of parentheses makes it very clear what's wrong. The headline is conveying example #3, when it was trying to go for example #1.
6. Re:Why do people not understand by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:53 · Score: 0
  
  My favourite was number 5, as it's somewhat absurd and also fits the headline.
  (SandorZoo as AC to help SNR)
7. Re:Why do people not understand by Provocateur · 2017-02-12 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  I was about to get me knickers all bunched up over this, and similar issues, until I read a former editor (the great Rob Malda himself) state what pretty much summed up the utter lack of editorship in Slashdot. It's in the FAQ linked down there at the bottom; I find it relatable to suspension of disbelief. At the moment though, we're the junk fighters, holding out our hand to try and stop the assault, with the hyphens and dashes suspended in mid-air
  
  --
  WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
8. Re: Why do people not understand by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 08:10 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, if "space junk" is understood to be a single term without hyphenation (as you argued), then the single hyphen is at least acceptable. Technically, it would probably be best to say "space-junk-fighting cable" to be completely clear since all three words are necessary for the concept. However, "space junk fighting cable" is the most incorrect of all these options, as "fighting," "space," and "junk" each are nonsensical as independent adjectives applied to "cable" without all of the others also present.
9. Re:Why do people not understand by Anonyme+Connard · 2017-02-12 21:27 · Score: 1
  
  Being Slashdot, "Japanese space tentacle" would be clear for everyone.
Smart thing would be by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 03:44 · Score: 0

to next time deploy an antigravity device. It will remove gravity and space junk will just fly away on its own.
Spider web by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 03:54 · Score: 0

They should always try to mimic nature first. A huge spider web made from strong coiled strands .
1. Re:Spider web by lazy+genes · 2017-02-12 03:58 · Score: 0
  
  Why didn't I think of that
2. Re:Spider web by JoshuaZ · 2017-02-12 04:44 · Score: 1
  
  This idea has been investigated and it has multiple serious problems. The most serious problem is that space junk is frequently moving very fast so rather than catch things one is much more likely to tear or pierce your web.
3. Re:Spider web by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 04:53 · Score: 0
  
  That's great except spiders can't exist in space. Nature works very differently out there.
4. Re:Spider web by religionofpeas · 2017-02-12 04:58 · Score: 1
  
  Spider web... spider web... does whatever spider web does. Can it grab junk from space ? No it can't, it's too weak. Look out! It's a spider web!
5. Re:Spider web by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:20 · Score: 0
  
  Build it into the satellite as an EOL failsafe. Once armed it would require a heartbeat from the main system and deploy when the thing dies.
  It cannot really help against existing debris but is a way to slow the increase.
6. Re:Spider web by PPH · 2017-02-12 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  Won't work. My bedroom has lots of spider webs and its still full of junk.
  
  --
  Have gnu, will travel.
i cry bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:05 · Score: 0

as stated in the article, If it were so simple. then it would have worked the first time..
What a fucking waste of resources..
1. Re:i cry bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 06:11 · Score: 0
  
  It certainly puts all the grandiose claims about how simple asteroid mining will be into perspective, huh?
2. Re: i cry bullshit by TWX · 2017-02-12 06:27 · Score: 1
  
  I've been flamed for pointing out that we've never smelted metal in space and that all of our smelting furnaces are designed to operate in an atmosphere and with gravity, and with large amounts of direct manual labor.
  
  People seem to think that somehow redesigning these processes and equipment for near-vacuum microgravity will be no issue. I strongly suspect these people have no idea what they're talking about or have read far too much of Kim Stanley Robinson's work and assume that it's hard-scifi.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
3. Re:i cry bullshit by lazy+genes · 2017-02-12 07:07 · Score: 0
  
  It would have to be a type of sulfide mining. Spray the meteor with acids. The meteor will dissolve into the desired compounds while looking like a comet. Profit.
4. Re: i cry bullshit by Dutch+Gun · 2017-02-12 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Anyone who thinks it's easy to do complicated things in space isn't really worth the effort to argue with. As it turns out, just about *everything* done in space has a huge host of unique challenges and hurdles to overcome. I'm pretty confident that we'll eventually be smelting in space, as that's the logical way to bootstrap massive in-space construction projects, but I'd imagine we're basically going to have to completely re-invent the technology for automation and zero-G environments.
  I've found that when someone starts a phrase with "All you have to do is..." (or other arrogantly dismissive phrase), 9 times out of 10 they haven't a clue how involved some of those processes are, or what circumstantial complications prevent a "simple" back-of-the-napkin solution. If you happen to have deep knowledge in a specific field or speciality, and then hear Slashdotters talking about it, it's invariably face-palm frustrating at the wrong assumptions made. It's happened often enough to me, so that I generally assume that's true of most other fields as well.
  
  --
  Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
5. Re: i cry bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 09:17 · Score: 0
  
  Or they know that there is no O2 in space and thus no smelting. Mining !== smelting.
6. Re: i cry bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 10:11 · Score: 0
  
  All you have to do is.... chip some ice off an asteroid, melt the ice, and use electrolysis to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. There is plenty of O2 in space. You just have to know where to look. Easy peasy.
7. Re: i cry bullshit by TWX · 2017-02-12 10:43 · Score: 1
  
  If you want to nitpick fine, if one can find asteroids with nice solid metal cores then you're right, you don't have to smelt in order to have useful material. You'll still have to use some kind of furnace process to turn that base iron into something besides base iron though, so you still have to get raw materials to the worksite and you still have to work out how exactly to go about consistently formulating steel in that environment, and you have to figure out how to shape that steel as it cools.
  
  Right now we have to overcome a disadvantage in the form of atmospheric contamination when making steel on Earth, but we gain an advantage in using gravity to manipulate materials to transport from one part of the steel mill to another and to create final products. Or do you just propose to manufacture roughly spherical blobs of metal and leave it at that?
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
8. Re: i cry bullshit by drinkypoo · 2017-02-12 11:37 · Score: 1
  
  Right now we have to overcome a disadvantage in the form of atmospheric contamination when making steel on Earth, but we gain an advantage in using gravity to manipulate materials to transport from one part of the steel mill to another and to create final products. Or do you just propose to manufacture roughly spherical blobs of metal and leave it at that?
  I think one hope is that we'll learn how to build foam steel, which can in theory be made in space — indeed, it may only be possible to make it there. Even if all we could do was make big extrusions out of it, it would be exceptionally useful for building stuff in space.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
9. Re: i cry bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 12:24 · Score: 0
  
  Foam steel should be able to be made on earth, we can already make foamed aluminum (it floats on water, and they can control the density of the bubbles throughout the cross section). It was discovered by accident, but if foam steel was necessary, I'm sure it can be developed on earth.
10. Re: i cry bullshit by dbIII · 2017-02-12 14:54 · Score: 1
  
  Smelting is typically the act of reducing a metal oxide to get metal.
  Some of the asteroids have metal in an unoxidized state so that makes the mineral processing a bit easier, or at least removes a step.
  I've mentioned this here before, but some (maybe rare but at least one has been found) are in a state where all you have to do is forge the thing you want out of a bit of metallic asteroid. The "sky iron" in fantasy stories is based on things like Tutenkamen's dagger which was forged from part of a meteorite.
  I should add, in case some readers don't know, is that forging is just heating a piece of metal up until it is soft enough to work and then hammering it into the shape you want. Think of making horseshoes which you've probably seen on TV if not in real life.
  
  Forging in space would not be trivial but it's easier than melting stuff and a hell of a lot easier than getting metal combined with something else out of an ore.
  I can't see any of the above happening until there is a moonbase. A furnace on a space station is a bit of a risk while one in a separate building at a moonbase is less likely to kill everyone around.
11. Re: i cry bullshit by dbIII · 2017-02-12 14:57 · Score: 1
  
  "All you have to do is..."
  Indeed. I just had a discussion with someone who seemed to think that a steampunk hydraulic robot is something that can be put together in an afternoon instead of a project of years with a string of inventions over those years to get it to the point where electronic robots are.
12. Re: i cry bullshit by TWX · 2017-02-12 16:21 · Score: 1
  
  True, currently exotic or unattainable materials may be able to be manufactured in microgravity or vacuum or some combination thereof. Unfortunately only expensive experimentation will establish what can be fabricated in space and at what cost. For all we know, manufacturing foam metals in huge blocks or somewhat amorphous blobs and then cutting them into shapes similarly to how a sawmill reduces trees to boards might be cheaper than producing rolled solid steel. We'll just have to see.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Drain the... space by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:11 · Score: 0

The thing they sent to clean up all of the junk is now part of the problem... sounds like a politician.
1. Re:Drain the... space by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:57 · Score: 0
  
  It was purposely placed on a cargo craft that already had its own deorbiting rockets and was already placed into a slow deorbit profile before the tether experiment was even attempted. It has already burnt up in the atmosphere and thus hasn't contributed to the space junk problem. Try to keep up.
Summary by freeze128 · 2017-02-12 05:18 · Score: 1

So... Basically, they just added more junk.
1. Re:Summary by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  No, the cable never was release and the ship returned back to the earths atmosphere. Next time someone needs to just put on a space suit and walk out there to "unfurl" it.
2. Re:Summary by retrosurf · 2017-02-12 07:49 · Score: 1
  
  No, not more space junk.
  The experiment was deployed on a capsule full of sewage and trash, and is going to be incinerated on re-entry.
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
3. Re:Summary by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 08:03 · Score: 0
  
  Two words: Decepticon Camouflage.
  This has been their plan from the start; to get Japanese companies to unknowingly design and build a Decepticon cloaking shield.
4. Re:Summary by Bruce+Perens · 2017-02-12 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  When it says "low earth orbit" you can assume that it will not contribute to space junk. Low earth orbits intersect the thin edge of the atmosphere and they thus degrade on their own due to atmospheric drag. Higher orbits are the problem ones.
  
  --
  Bruce Perens.
5. Re:Summary by RockDoctor · 2017-02-13 14:01 · Score: 1
  
  No, someone called "freeze128" failed to RTFA, but remembered to log on to watch himself publish his (or her) reading inability for everyone to see.
  Well, at lest you're not an AC.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Vacuum welding or control glitch by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:21 · Score: 0

From the article they seem to think it is come kind of control/motor issue, but I wonder if it might have been yet another case of vacuum welding. More than a few failures in spacecraft have been due to this bane of space engineers.
1. Re:Vacuum welding or control glitch by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 07:40 · Score: 0
  
  Dubious. Enough failures in space have been due to this bane of space engineers, that this is definitely at the forefront of mind of anyone in the industry. ANYTHING not protected against cold welding raises a red flag. It still can happen, but not because they forgot to protect against it, just that the protection failed.
Unclear Summary by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:29 · Score: 1

Every summary of this story I have seen completely misunderstands what this technology is for.
This is NOT intended to deal with the problem of existing space junk. This is a cheap/light widget you can add to FUTURE satellites which will allow them to de-orbit in a timely fashion, thus reducing future space junk.
It should also be noted that the Kounotori 6 spacecraft was already on a decaying orbit when the cable was meant to deploy, so no additional space junk was created by the failure.
1. Re:Unclear Summary by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 06:13 · Score: 0
  
  That is definitely the short term goal, but longer term if this technology is effective enough it could go on to deorbit other dead satellites/debris. If we get serious about cleaning up space junk I would imagine one part of that would be attaching a few cubesat like devices to orbital payloads, each with a tether, some basic navigation (camera, mono-propellant thrusters, INU, etc) and some kind of grapple (probably just a side of the craft coated with a strong adhesive). Once in orbit they would detach and be guided to a piece of debris which they would attach to and (slowly) deorbit.
Space brooms? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 05:33 · Score: 0

Back to the drawing board
Smug Lisp weenie by Latent+Heat · 2017-02-12 05:34 · Score: 1

Hey, dude; we're wise to your kind!
Why does gravity not work? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 06:26 · Score: 0

If I step off the ISS, I guarantee you I'm plummeting to earth. But yet this shit floats endlessly? Makes no sense.
1. Re: Why does gravity not work? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 07:58 · Score: 0
  
  Nah man... If you step off the ISS, sure you're plummeting... But, much like Douglas Adams' famous quote, you're gonna miss the ground.
  Congratulations, you've discovered the secret to flying!
2. Re:Why does gravity not work? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 13:21 · Score: 0
  
  lol, go read a physics book son.
Re:Simple by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 07:09 · Score: 0

Hey it's the space nutter nutter!
late,later,last. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-12 07:12 · Score: 0

Not bad for /. ,,
it only happened a week ago !!!
There is something beguiling about space tethers. by hey! · 2017-02-12 07:17 · Score: 1

That's the only conclusion I can draw by the way space designers keep turning to them no matter how often they bollux things up. Tethers must be the astronautical equivalent of an abusive boyfriend.

--
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Junk ( (space junk) fighting cable) by raymorris · 2017-02-12 08:00 · Score: 1

In this case, it's a junk junk-fighting cable.
So why does gravity not work? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-13 02:49 · Score: 0

I'm one of those people who sinks like a rock in water: this is something I have witnessed empirically. So if I were to step off the ISS, I'm plummeting towards earth like an asteroid. And yet this stuff floats around endlessly. It makes no sense.
ISRO Just Launched 106 satellites in one go by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-15 07:15 · Score: 0

And these people are unable to deploy a rope? Decadence...... They need to have more Indians in their space program