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posted by CoolHand on Saturday May 02 2015, @05:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the still-looking-for-solutions dept.

http://theconversation.com/space-debris-what-can-we-do-with-unwanted-satellites-40736

There are thousands of satellites in Earth orbit, of varying age and usefulness. At some point they reach the end of their lives, at which point they become floating junk. What do we do with them then?

Most satellites are not designed with the end of their life in mind. But some are designed to be serviced, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, which as part of its final service was modified to include a soft capture mechanism. This is an interface designed to allow a future robotic spacecraft to attach itself and guide the telescope to safe disposal through burn-up in the Earth’s atmosphere once its operational life has ended.

Thinking about methods to retire satellites is important, because without proper disposal they become another source of space debris – fragments of old spacecraft, satellites and rockets now orbiting Earth at thousands of miles per hour. These fragments travel so fast that even a piece the size of a coin has enough energy to disable a whole satellite. There are well over 100,000 pieces this size or larger already orbiting Earth, never mind much larger items – for example the Progress unmanned cargo module, which Russian Space Agency mission controllers have lost control of and which will orbit progressively lower until it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:09PM

    by looorg (578) on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:09PM (#177910)

    Laser Cannon Skeet Shooting!

    It could be the next ultra-super-rich-thing. The drawback being if you miss and or hit the wrong thing that could be very expensive, and problematic since some of them might be nuclear powered ...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by BK on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:17PM

    by BK (4868) on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:17PM (#177914)

    The Chinese have already tied that. It mostly just makes a bigger mess and adds to the problem. Please let's not do that.

    --
    ...but you HAVE heard of me.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:39PM (#177919)

      OP is talking about sharks with lasers in space. I'd rather have them train on expired satellites than cars stuck in traffic on the GWB. There's already enough potholes without some 2nd rate shooting from a Left Shark wannabe.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by VortexCortex on Saturday May 02 2015, @10:14PM

      by VortexCortex (4067) on Saturday May 02 2015, @10:14PM (#177973)

      You're speaking of the missile with which China shot one of their satellites and greatly increased the space debris. [wikipedia.org]

      What you may be unaware of, and what I presume that OP is speaking of, is de-orbiting debris and sats by pushing them with lasers, [space.com] thus degrading their orbit and burning (most of) them up in the atmosphere.

      I hope whomever modded your post as spam made a mistake.