Whatcha gonna do with all that junk, all that junk in outer space?
Hey space junkies, Julian here for DNews.
Space is more accessible than ever, and we’re launching new stuff up there all the time.
But along with all the satellites and space stations, we’ve also left a lot of litter
in our wake.
And if it hits anything, it’ll create more junk and quickly get out of control.
To help keep track of all that junk, NASA monitors the bigger pieces and actually publishes
a newsletter called Orbital Debris Quarterly.
That’s right, NASA talks about space junk as much as we talk about gentlemen.
It’s like a tabloid for space geeks.
It even ranks the top 10 satellite breakups of all time.
But why just keep track of it?
Why don’t we go out there and take out the trash?
There have been some proposals and experiments.
As far back as 1996 the space station Mir attached pieces of gel to the outside to gather
microscopic space junk, though the results were negligible, ruling it out as trash collection
service.
Other ideas have been suggested, like launching other satellites to grapple onto derelict
ones and hauling them back down to earth like a professional wrestler doing a Batista bomb.
The Swiss EPFL’s CleanSpace One was drawn up to grab Switzerland’s first satellite
Swiss Cube and remove it from orbit.
How do you like that, they send one tiny cube up and they still want to clean it up, way
to go The Swiss.
But their solution can’t capture debris that’s very large or very small.
But the ESA is also working on something to take large satellites down by 2021, but like
the Swiss space roomba, it’s a one shot deal.
In 2014 Japan’s space agency actually tested out a metal space net designed to create a
magnetic pull to drag floaty bits out of orbit.
They hope to have something ready by 2019.
Ideas that don’t require sending something expensive into space expensively have also
been dreamed up.
In 2012 Raytheon tested phase one of their Space Debris Elimination concept.
The idea was a device suspended by balloons 80 km up would shoot a jet of atmosphere as
high as 600 km.
When junk hits the suddenly thick air, it loses speed and comes back down to earth.
Raytheon concluded that while the energy costs were high, they weren’t unreasonable and
could possibly be reduced with further development.
And of course, there’s everybody’s favorite idea: space lasers.
Yes, space lasers.
Sure we could put them on other satellites to give them a clear path, but that’s a
space law no-no because now you’ve started weaponizing space.
Even putting them somewhere neutral like the ISS is dicey because that’s how you get
rogue supervillain astronauts.
Instead if we’re going to have what NASA boringly calls a “laser broom,” it would
have to be stationed on Earth.
This means you’d have to target fast moving tiny particles hundreds of kilometers away
and pepper them with laser bursts in just the right way to unsettle their orbit and
bring them tumbling down.
No easy feat.
Plus it is imperative that the laser doesn’t miss and damage something we actually need
that’s farther out in space because the laser beam just kept going!
Makes you wonder what happened to all those shots that missed when X-wings and Tie Fighters
tangled.
Now, technically, we don’t have to do ANY of this.
All objects circling the earth will experience orbit decay and eventually crash into the
earth on their own.
Given enough time, space WILL clean itself.
But it’d be nice to have some control over where all that heavy debris lands, and not
to have to wait decades or even centuries for gravity to decide.
Right now the cost and challenge of cleaning up space isn’t really worth the effort:
space is still a pretty big place and the odds of collisions are slim.
But if satellites do start colliding, then space junk will multiply and the problem will
get out of hand fast.
If it gets to that point, hopefully one of these technologies will be ready to clear
a path and hopefully it won’t be the “laser broom”.
So say we make these technologies to knock space junk back down towards earth.
Then what?
Trace and Amy talk about dropping spaceballs here.
What proposal is your favorite?
It’s lasers isn’t it?
ISN’T IT?