Comments on: CleanSpace One satellite designed to clean up space junk

By: StevoR

StevoR — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:35:12 +0000

@ ^ Satellite Receiver | April 17, 2012 2:01 AM

But wouldn’t those clouds of ice cyrstals be a menace to other functuional satellites and spacecraft in themselves? Isn’t that just adding to the problem?

Or would the ice ctyrstals melt / sublimate away rapidly enough for this not to be an issue?

By: Satellite Receiver

Satellite Receiver — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:01:33 +0000

The thing is the larger objects aren’t as big a problem as the many small objects. That means spending a lot to deorbit very small things. One idea I had was a satellite in a retrograde orbit that uses an air cannon to blast clouds of ice crystals into the path of oncoming objects. An impact from even a tiny crystal would likely deorbit the target.

By: julianbury

julianbury — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:52:34 +0000

A cubic kilometer fine-fibre cloud could soak up the small stuff. A one-ton payload could could expand to HUGE. It would be designed to ablate to dust within a few months of UV exposure. The very thin trace of air up there would very slowly reduce its altitude, bringing nuts, bolts, spanners and other shrapnel with it.

By: Calli Arcale

Calli Arcale — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:11:07 +0000

It is correct that this cannot solve the entire space debris problem, but it’s not actually meant to. One major omission from the clip is that this is intended for a very specific sort of space debris: dead nanosatellites, and particularly CubeSats. In fact, this would itself be a CubeSat, or at least very close to that in scale. Right now, operators of CubeSats rarely have any means of deorbiting their spacecraft; these things don’t generally have any propulsion (though one of the recent Vega maiden flight payloads carries a solar sail, which they intended to use to demonstrate CubeSat self-disposal). The idea is that CubeSats are relatively cheap to launch, since they basically hitchhike on other launches, so this trash collector would also be cheap to launch (in theory). A CubeSat operator could buy one and launch it to remove their spacecraft at the end of its mission.

It still remains to be seen whether the universities which currently operate the vast majority of CubeSats would be interested or able to do such a thing to tidy up after themselves, but it could prove viable for this specific application. I do not think it would be viable for larger targets, such as dead payload fairings, spent rocket stages, and large defunct satellites. At least, not yet. The deorbit spacecraft would have to be a nanosatellite to be financially viable, and I’m not convinced any of those would have the performance needed to clean up large debris.

By: ppnl

ppnl — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:34:02 +0000

The thing is the larger objects aren’t as big a problem as the many small objects. That means spending a lot to deorbit very small things.

One idea I had was a satellite in a retrograde orbit that uses an air cannon to blast clouds of ice crystals into the path of oncoming objects. An impact from even a tiny crystal would likely deorbit the target.

By: Artor

Artor — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:10:44 +0000

Hmmm… Just brainstorming here, but I wonder if a main sattelite “mothership” with a number of smaller robotic rockets could be useful? The main sattelite could casually cruise around in it’s designated orbit, close to a crowded lane of junk, and fire off a small rocket towards a target. The smaller rocket would be easier for matching velocities, and it could grapple & drag the junk down to a fiery death while the mothership continues to look for more targets..

By: Greg laden

Greg laden — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:41:30 +0000

Well, there s still the giant magnet idea.

By: travc

travc — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:42:05 +0000

Re: Greg’s #6 post…
You are certainly correct that moving from one orbit to another takes a lot of energy. But most old satellites (the ones which weren’t designed to de-orbit themselves) are in very similar orbits. The class of orbits which take the least amount of energy to achieve is what I’m talking about (nothing will be going the “opposite direction” since it would be prohibitively costly to put it there in the first place.) But again, you’re right that it takes a lot of energy to adjust even a few degrees… that is still a lot less than getting into orbit in the first place though.

The idea I was floating was for the cleaner craft to use low impulse (aka slow but very efficient) engines and take it’s sweet time to de-orbit a number of pre-defined junk objects. There is some big junk which isn’t suitable to this approach (very different orbits) of course.

A bunch of very small craft with grapples each going off to de-orbit it’s own target probably does makes more sense than a single craft visiting each target. They would probably be launched in clusters. The key is that these would be VERY SMALL craft. This appears to be what the CleanSpace One design is actually about now that I read a bit more about it. The grapple system seems like it could be simpler though… these targets are rotating in all sorts of ways and a rigid grapple seems ill-advised.

Anyway, small debris, which requires some sort of sweeper, is a much more interesting problem IMO.

By: HalfMooner

HalfMooner — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:51:11 +0000

Nuke near space, and let orbital mechanics sort it out. (Assuming we can get those mechanics into orbit.)

By: H.H.

H.H. — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:31:33 +0000

Just burn the shit with lasers. Done. Crack a beer.