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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 captain normal on Sunday May 03 2015, @04:48AM

    by captain normal (2205) on Sunday May 03 2015, @04:48AM (#178052)

    Why should smaller space junk fall into the gravity well faster than the larger? Galileo showed that size and weight didn't matter. The only thing that could slow a fall is the atmosphere, and it would affect the smaller, lighter pieces more than the larger, heavier pieces.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @06:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @06:42AM (#178060)

    IANAP, but there is pressure from solar radiation, which becomes important for objects with a large area to mass ratio. Big, compact chunks (low area, high mass) don't suffer much perturbation, but smaller, lighter, less compact chunks (little mass for high area) end up cast into orbits that descend into burn-up levels or ascend into interplanetary space. When the US decided to put nearly half a billion copper needles into space (Project West Ford) back in the early 60's, all the tiny, free-floating needles deorbited within three years, while those that failed to disperse but remained instead in clumps are still there.