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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.

Related Stories

"Robotic Squid" Could Explore Europa's Oceans 13 comments

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program awards researchers $100,000 grants to help them prepare feasibility studies of their space exploration and aerospace ideas. The Phase I selections for 2015 are listed here.

Mason Peck of Cornell University has proposed a "robotic squid" (or eel) that could be used to explore the oceans of Europa. Other proposals include "In-Space Manufacture of Storable Propellants", asteroid mining, and directed energy propulsion. From NASA's press release:

NIAC Phase I awards are valued at approximately $100,000, providing awardees the funding needed to conduct a nine-month initial definition and analysis study of their concepts. If the basic feasibility studies are successful, awardees can apply for Phase II awards, valued up to $500,000 for two additional years of concept development.

One of the selected proposals calls for the use of a soft-robotic rover for missions that can't be accomplished with conventional power systems. This rover would resemble an eel with a short antenna on its back that harvests power from locally changing magnetic fields. The goal is to enable amphibious exploration of gas-giant moons like Europa.

Another proposal will look at using two glider-like unmanned aerial vehicles connected by an ultra-strong cable at different altitudes that sail without propulsion. The vehicle would use wind shear in the lower stratosphere (approximately 60,000 ft.), similar to a kite surfer, where the upper aircraft provides lift and aerodynamic thrust, and the lower aircraft provides an upwind force to keep it from drifting downwind. If successful, this atmospheric satellite could remain in the stratosphere for years, enabling NASA's Earth science missions, monitoring capabilities or aircraft navigation at a fraction of the cost of orbital satellite networks.

Also at Wired and The Register.

ISS May Get Laser Cannon 29 comments

ExtremeTech has an article suggesting the International Space Station may add a Laser "CAN-non" in coming years.

The business end of the proposed laser system would be a Coherent Amplification Network (CAN) laser that can focus a single powerful beam on a piece of debris. The laser would vaporize the surface of the target, causing a plume of plasma to push the object away from the station and toward the atmosphere.

This is still just a proposal, but a test version of the laser might be deployed to the station in a few years.

The Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO) is scheduled to be installed on Japan's ISS module in 2017. This is not by design a space-junk-killing piece of equipment. It's intended to monitor the atmosphere for ultraviolet emissions caused by cosmic rays.

However it might serve as an experimental platform for testing (at much lower power) the capability of slight deflections of orbiting space junk.

Also covered here.

We discussed the general problem of space junk here on Soylent News at the beginning of the month.

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Appalbarry on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:05PM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:05PM (#177907) Journal

    Don't know about other places, but I find that you can post anything in the Craigslist Free [craigslist.ca] section and have it gone in twenty minutes.

    Of course you need to specify that you will not deliver it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:07PM (#177924)

      When I make poopoo, I flush it down the toilet. They could do the same with a satellite that is unwanted.

      • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday May 02 2015, @11:51PM

        by davester666 (155) on Saturday May 02 2015, @11:51PM (#177982)

        make it a lottery. will it completely burn up on entry? if not, where will it strike?

  • (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 ...

    • (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.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by kaszz on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:11PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:11PM (#177911) Journal

    Setup a satellite with a robotic arm that can collect and either throw satellites into instant de-orbit or collect the junk for the next level of modding. After all, when you at great expense got such precious material in orbit. Why not make use of it instead of de-orbiting it?

    Fuel for thrusters can perhaps be siphoned from unused satellites?

    Hitting a moving target inside the orbiting lanes will be a challenge. But that can probably be solved.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:12PM

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:12PM (#177925) Journal

      If unused satellites had any fuel left we wouldn't have these problems. They could de-orbit themselves.

      Chasing satellites is super expensive and tossing them also tosses your tosser. Tricky business.

      But small(ish) single use satellite tugs (with harpoons or nets maybe) could be a solution for the older booster and dead satellites where no de-orbit planning was done.

      But I doubt it is the large intact satellites that are the problem here, its the little pieces that present the risk to everything else. And that suggests trying to re-use the metal from dead sattelites in space is going to present more problems than de-orbit. Even random de-orbit lands in the ocean 70 percent of the time.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:03PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:03PM (#178104) Journal

        What you need is a "tar baby"...remember the old story about the rabbit getting stuck in the tar baby and being unable to escape? The problem with the debris isn't the whole dead sats, those are easy enough to keep up with and move with one of several methods, its the billions of small pieces of crap [craphound.com], everything from lost gloves to pieces of paint from boosters, all these little pieces zipping at such insane speed is like a billion bullets just waiting to rip into the good sats and trash them.

        So what you need to get all these billions of pieces that are too small for a targeted mission is something more "out of the box"....tar baby. A blob of absorbent material that can take these hits and just absorb them until its too filled with pieces of crap to hold any more, at which time either let its now increased weight drag it down or perhaps use a small rocket to speed its descent.

        But if we go with using targeted missions for each and every piece, even if we just go after the largest ones? It would take tens, possibly hundreds of billions and several decades. Compare this to the tar baby, I'm sure the guys at 3M can come up with a thick enough foam substance to do the job and depending on the size of the blob you create? It could suck up thousands of pieces of little pieces of space crap.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:23PM

          by frojack (1554) on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:23PM (#178244) Journal

          Yes, but we better use the term Orbital Quick Sand, because there are a lot of touchy people [wikipedia.org] out there.

          The problem here is the only orbit that will bring you close enough to gather bits of space junk is the exact opposite orbit of said junk, which makes the closing speed horrific. You can't orbit hop up and down trying to rendezvous with every pyrotechnic bolt head or bag of poop.

          This is also why there have been so few impacts, and why impacts that have happened are at relatively slow speeds. Every thing in the same orbit is going the same speed.

          True, a more elliptical orbit or one at a slightly different angle would cross, and you might be able to use that to your advantage with you quick sand baby.

          Considering all the brilliant minds in the space programs of several countries, I find it amazing nobody foresaw this problem.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:14AM

            by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:14AM (#178868) Journal

            We are foreseeing the destruction of the planet. And still continue..

            It's all about human behavior and organizational builtin properties. Most people perhaps isn't built to handle unforgiving environments.

            • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:42AM

              by frojack (1554) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:42AM (#178879) Journal

              True, I'm sure the early pioneers had no means to force reentry, and ignored it because space is the big empty.
              They knew in the back of their mind that there was a problem, but skipped it for their current project. That became habit.
              It really was a self solving problem in the early days.

              We see the, and largely have moved to correct for the "destruction of the planet" (which by the way, is entirely beyond man's capability, regardless of how many dystopian movies are made about it). Deforestation, polluted rivers, smog, litter, etc, are all problems that have been seen and are being addressed, rather successfully for the most part. CO2 is being worked on as we speak.

              --
              No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:49PM

      by zocalo (302) on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:49PM (#177936)
      Might work, but the recycling satellite will probably need a lot of propellant. It's going to have an opposite reaction to that transferred to the satellite/debris being de-orbitted, and it's going to need to do more than give them a tiny nudge towards the atmosphere; it'll need to put them on to a safe trajectory that isn't going to cause collisions and more debris on the way down. Maybe a combination of de-orbiting the larger bits and putting smaller ones into some form of hopper for when it self-deorbits with the last of its propellant might be a start, but it seems like an awful lot of effort for what might only be a small gain. Still - you've got to start somewhere.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 02 2015, @08:56PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Saturday May 02 2015, @08:56PM (#177952) Journal

        Regarding fuel. One may have to send up some station with a lot of kamikaze (small) robots and make use of smart navigation and time instead of gigantic fuel supplies. Perhaps solar sails can be used?

        • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday May 02 2015, @09:34PM

          by zocalo (302) on Saturday May 02 2015, @09:34PM (#177962)
          Thinking about it a bit more, maybe in the case of larger chunks of debris in LEO this could possibly be an application for cube-sats; with each one essentially just a basic guidance computer, motor, "docking clamp", and the rest a fuel tank. Each cube-sat might only be able to de-orbit a single object, or maybe two at a pinch if the orbits lined up, but given how many of them you could launch on a single booster that might be more efficient than a single satellite cruising around and trying to de-orbit multiple dead objects.
          --
          UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
          • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:04AM

            by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:04AM (#178864) Journal

            I'll guess the limiting factor will be the fuel and cost. The amount of micro amounts of fuel has to be enough to push the object with enough energy to de-orbit.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 02 2015, @11:44PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 02 2015, @11:44PM (#177981) Journal

      Your thoughts are similar to my own. We went to great expense to get all that stuff up there. It would be great if we could just boost that scrap yard up a little higher, and park it in a more stable orbit. Maybe 3/4 or more of it is useless to us today, but in 20 or 50 years, the salvage rights could be invaluable. I can visualize a team picking over the boneyard for scraps of titanium to be machined into some little widget. Or - forget machining old parts into new, just find a half ton of aluminum to be melted down and recast into new stuff. Even plastics are pretty valuable, all things considered. Most plastics can be chopped up, melted, and formed into new shapes.

      We've been told that there are a lot of advantages to zero G factories. Park all that junk where future factories can easily access it!

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday May 03 2015, @02:16AM

        by anubi (2828) on Sunday May 03 2015, @02:16AM (#178008) Journal

        Insightful... up in space, there is no atmosphere to oxidize your stuff and no gravity to pull it apart.

        I keep envisioning a big concave mirror which is mostly mylar foil arranged like a solar sail, which is temporarily deployed at the salvage site. You put your "useless" stuff at the focal point, its heated to melting point, and becomes a sphere due to surface tension. ( Idea shamelessly copied from Jack Vance, short story, "Sail 25" [technovelgy.com] )

        Or, while its hot, extrude it to more usable forms. "Angle iron" for instance. Or maybe fasteners.

        You may not need to worry about substantial supports, as there is no gravity trying to bend your freshly extruded material - you just push it out of the focal point so it "blackbody" radiates its heat, dropping its temperature drops below melting, and you are back to solid rod, bar, or whatever.

        You may end up with "slag" as well, the end product of things like insulation, epoxy, glass, and the like. I do not know what it could be used for... can it be molten and foamed to make a pumice-like thermal insulation material?

        What I do not know.. will these metals sublimate when melted in vacuum and all you get is gaseous metal?

        I know nothing about "pollution" of space by releasing gaseous byproducts of decomposition. Will these gases return to Earth and be re-absorbed by natural cycles as earthly gases are? Or will they remain in place, offering drag to other satellites?

        I do not think this is a simple question and deserves substantial research.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 1) by deadstick on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:51AM

      by deadstick (5110) on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:51AM (#177989)

      Fuel for thrusters can perhaps be siphoned

      You really want a different verb...

  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:06PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:06PM (#177923)

    Step one is to start taking precautions when launching things, something already being done. Accidents will still happen of course. Most junk will eventually fall out of orbit, smaller ones faster than larger. The trick is to get to a point where we are putting new junk in orbit slower than the laws or orbital mechanics can clear out the old stuff and so long as we can convince China to stop testing ABM systems we are probably at that point now.

    Next, wait and see if yesterday's story about an EM drive pans out. If it does, problem solved since a simple tug could be launched to match orbits and collect debris, boost into an orbit that will eventually (doesn't really matter if it takes centuries) end up in the Sun, dump the junk and boost back to fill up again. Better still, in the case of largely functional pieces, boost out to them, lock on and bring them to the ISS for repair and then put them back on station.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:15PM (#177927)

      Why is your junk in space? Shouldn't your junk be in your pants?

    • (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.

      --
      When life isn't going right, go left.
      • (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.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:43PM (#177933)

    Perhaps the ones who benefitted from these satellites should know how to get rid of them. With all these spy satellites in orbit, and new ones launched every day. As long as the satellites are working, they belong to them. As soon as the satellites reach the end of their lives, they become OUR problem. Nice. Similar to Global warming, limited fossil fuels, mercury in the oceans, etc. Ask who benefitted from these (and much more), and who paid the price?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @08:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @08:22PM (#177944)

      NRO by policy deorbits its satellites intentionally to prevent capabilities from being discovered by opponents; they use the South Pacific, as that's the hardest, emptiest place from which to try to recover debris.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @07:48PM (#177935)

    Statistically placed to bring them down on places where people riot in favor of thugs

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @09:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @09:57PM (#177964)

    hing heavy to the satelites and bring them back down?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 02 2015, @10:02PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday May 02 2015, @10:02PM (#177966) Homepage Journal

    this isn't well thought out mind you.

    Any metal will experienced induced current when subjected to a changing magnetic field, even if that metal is not itself magnetic. Thus if you drop a piece of aluminum between the poles of a strong "C"-shaped magnet, it will slow down a bit as it passes through the strong part of the field.

    The vacuum of space has the happy quality of being quite an effective thermal insulator, you just need a reflector to keep the sun off. We've had satellites carry liquid helium for years.

    So make a big, massive - for inertia - superconducting then orbit it in the opposite direction to normal, that is, east to west. As satellites pass by it they will experience some drag, eventually they will de-orbit.

    This big magnet will lose momentum as well it will need a booster, perhaps a solar-powered ion drive.

    Another idea would be to use a laser to vaporize some material on the eastern side of a piece of space junk. That will slow it down an increment. Hit it with the laser enough times and it will deorbit. That would take a lot smaller laser than would be required to totally vaporize it.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:23AM

      by krishnoid (1156) on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:23AM (#178056)

      Your music download and concert links are still busted.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by gidds on Tuesday May 05 2015, @01:35PM

      by gidds (589) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @01:35PM (#179087)

      As satellites pass by it [...]

      Interesting idea.

      But space, as someone famously once said, is big.  Really big.  You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindboggling big it is... 

      Wouldn't such an magnet need to have a measurable effect at distances measured in thousands of kilometres?  I haven't calculated what sort of magnetic field strength that would need, but I suspect it's unachievable with anything but real whacko handwavy science-fiction technology.

      And even then, wouldn't it be dwarfed by existing fields — in particular, the Earth's own field?

      --
      [sig redacted]
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:38AM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:38AM (#177986)

    Go to settings and set junk persistence to 0....poof.....no more space junk!

    Well, it worked in KSP...

    https://xkcd.com/1244/ [xkcd.com]

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.