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Space Junk Successfully Captured In Orbit For the First Time (with Video) (surrey.ac.uk)
"The Surrey Space Center successfully used a net to capture a piece of artificial space junk in orbit for the first time in history on Sunday," writes Slashdot reader dmoberhaus. "The video was just released Wednesday and is quite stunning."
"Not only does the net look cool as hell, it's addressing a major problem for the future of space exploration," reports Motherboard: The test was carried about by the RemoveDEBRIS satellite, an experimental space debris removal platform built by an international consortium of space companies and university research centers. There are tens of thousands of pieces of fast-moving space junk in orbit, which range from the centimeter-scale all the way to entire rocket stages. Some of these pieces are moving faster than a bullet and all of them pose a serious danger to other satellites and crewed capsules... Removing this junk from orbit is particularly challenging because of the various sizes of the debris, its erratic tumbling motion, and the fact that some pieces are moving as fast as 30,000 miles per hour.
The successful experiment follows six years of Earth-based testing, according to a professor at the lead research institution, the Surrey Space Centre.
"While it might sound like a simple idea, the complexity of using a net in space to capture a piece of debris took many years of planning, engineering and coordination."
"Not only does the net look cool as hell, it's addressing a major problem for the future of space exploration," reports Motherboard: The test was carried about by the RemoveDEBRIS satellite, an experimental space debris removal platform built by an international consortium of space companies and university research centers. There are tens of thousands of pieces of fast-moving space junk in orbit, which range from the centimeter-scale all the way to entire rocket stages. Some of these pieces are moving faster than a bullet and all of them pose a serious danger to other satellites and crewed capsules... Removing this junk from orbit is particularly challenging because of the various sizes of the debris, its erratic tumbling motion, and the fact that some pieces are moving as fast as 30,000 miles per hour.
The successful experiment follows six years of Earth-based testing, according to a professor at the lead research institution, the Surrey Space Centre.
"While it might sound like a simple idea, the complexity of using a net in space to capture a piece of debris took many years of planning, engineering and coordination."
But now what? Looks like they just added to the mass of the trash.
They deployed a target for their capture device test. It wasn't found space junk.
nothing in orbit around the earth can go 30,000 MPH with respect to the ground though, that's some serious rounding! just over 25,000 MPH is the max, otherwise it's leaving
This wasn't even a piece of space junk - it was a object purposely made and launched from the mother satellite. This reduces the complexity by major factors: 1) this junk was of the perfect size and shape to be captured by the net 2) it was nearly matched in speed to the capture net 3) it was at nearly the same velocity (speed and directly) 4) it was in the exact effing orbit. 5) The resulting combination then slowly de-orbits, using up all the equipment.
This means that you have to have one of these gizmos for each piece of junk. If you boost several gizmos at once with one mothership that has all the maneuvering capability, you're going to use up lots of maneuvering fuel to match orbits with each object. If you boost each gizmo separately, you'll need even more boost fuel.
Presumably the same technology can be scaled to bring down the other guy's satellites, too.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The "rest of the world" is increasingly adding to the junk, including things like Chinese tests of anti-satellite weapons leaving clouds of shrapnel where there used to be just one old dead satellite. Thanks, world.
As for the US "making most of the mess," yeah - and the "rest of the world" has for a long time been happily making use of the stuff we've put in orbit. Let me guess: you'd like to see the rest of the world permanently eclipse space activity, and then ignore the wake that all of that activity leaves behind it, because Everywhere Else = Good, US = Bad.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yeah, I was going to post that, but you beat me to it.
I wonder if they meant 30,000 km/hr. That would be just about right for a very low altitude satellite.