International Space Station has new way to dispose of trash:
Even astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have to take out the trash. Traditionally, garbage from the space station has been loaded into the cargo spacecraft that bring supplies to the station and stay docked there. Then the cargo ship is released to burn up in the atmosphere, with the trash inside. But now, the station has a new method for getting rid of trash — by shooting it out of an airlock.
The new trash disposal system makes use of an airlock called Bishop, part of a commercial module added to the station in 2020. The company Nanoracks which built the module, along with Thales Alenia Space, and Boeing, oversaw the release of trash from the airlock for the first time last weekend, on Saturday, July 2.
When the trash leaves the airlock it will burn up in the atmosphere, so it won't add to the problem of space debris. The trash is put into a special waste container that can hold up to 600 pounds of garbage, and which is mounted in the airlock. The test performed last week was recorded in video footage and shared by Nanoracks, and you can see the trash floating away from various views below:
"Waste collection in space has been a long standing, yet not as publicly discussed, challenge aboard the ISS," said Cooper Read, Bishop Airlock program manager at Nanoracks, in a statement. "Four astronauts can generate up to 2,500 kg of trash per year, or about two trash cans per week. As we move into a time with more people living and working in space, this is a critical function just like it is for everyone at home."
Didn't Heinlein predict this?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Sunday July 10 2022, @05:29PM (5 children)
If it's not okay pollution-wise to just burn our trash here at ground level, what makes it okay pollution-wise to burn the trash in the upper atmosphere?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Sunday July 10 2022, @11:57PM
It's bad at ground because of the smell.
When pollution is burned by re-entry, all the toxins and poisons are safely released into the breathable atmosphere without anyone having to smell it. So it's okay.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday July 11 2022, @12:18PM
Why don't they just do what everyone else does, leave in in an Amazon box on your doorstep and wait for it to get stolen. Problem solved.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 11 2022, @03:29PM
Quantity is the difference.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by dmbasso on Monday July 11 2022, @05:18PM
I wonder why all this mass (which costs a lot to be put there) isn't repurposed for shielding instead.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2022, @02:57PM
Someone else go do the math... I'm lazy. :p
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Sunday July 10 2022, @05:31PM (6 children)
Presumably the waste launcher has a big delta v so that the rubbish does not intercept the ISS on future orbits, until it lands in the atmosphere. Anyone know what is the delta-v that the waste launcher can produce?
ps: wasn't Bishop the android in Alien?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @07:59PM (4 children)
Yes, please, someone explain this. Does this shoot the garbage (presumably) in the opposite direction the ISS is traveling and giving it enough delta-v to drop out of orbit? From the videos, it doesn't seem that it's moving all that fast (relative to the ISS). Is it really that easy to push something out of orbit?
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday July 10 2022, @09:58PM
Just typing off the cuff here, but the ISS is still low enough to suffer a small amount of atmospheric drag. Without occasional boosts it would slow down and subsequently crash and burn. Without any additional speed the trash can will come down eventually, altho I don't know if that's all they're relying on here.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @10:07PM
From an interview [nasa.gov] from a little while ago:
If they are shooting it directly backwards, then they will be lowering the altitude of the orbit on the other side of the Earth making the orbit of the trash slightly more elliptical than the ISS orbit. I'm assuming they'd do this at the highest altitude of the ISS orbit to maximize the effect. Then because the trash will experience atmospheric drag, it won't be able to reach the same altitude as the ISS, so there is no collision problem to worry about. And the trash should stay in the same orbital plane as the ISS, so that would minimize collisions with anything else over the year its orbit is decaying.
Maybe amateurs will predict reentries of the trash and we can have trash meteor watches, but thinking of a burning ball of trash coming through the atmosphere sure does remind me of a Futurama episode [fandom.com].
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 11 2022, @12:04AM (1 child)
It looks from the video like it is going at an angle which is partly down toward earth, and partly opposite direction ISS is travelling. Both motions would serve to bring it into the atmosphere. Moving it backward moves it to a lower perigee. Moving it down towards earth probably doesn't hurt.
From video it is difficult to tell just how fast it is moving. But let's just say it is going ten minutes per mile. To drop it 100 miles would take 1000 minutes. With 300 minutes being 5 hours, we're talking maybe 16 ish hours to drop by 100 miles. From earth to the edge of space is about 100 miles. So in 16 hours it seems likely to me that from the ISS (further up than edge of space) it is likely to hit atmosphere much more sooner than 16 hours.
Now that is based on quite a bit of guesswork -- especially about the initial velocity of the trash bag leaving the ISS.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Monday July 11 2022, @08:16AM
That's not how orbital mechanics works. Just as an example of how unintuitive it can be, if you throw something straight down towards Earth from the ISS, in 90 minutes it will hit the top of the station, unless acted upon by another force such as atmospheric drag.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Sunday July 10 2022, @10:04PM
I don't think that the ISS will encounter that trash in its next orbits. Even if it only falls at 1 m/s, one orbit is about 90 minutes, so the trash will have dropped 5400 m. But it is orbiting almost as fast as the ISS, so it will take many hours for them to be in each other's neighborhood again.
(Score: 2, Funny) by liar on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:23PM
I'm remembering how the series Dead Like Me started (first episode)...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Snotnose on Sunday July 10 2022, @08:42PM
Which I, as an Applied Math major, failed at in a job in the 90s.
Orbital mechanics is hard. Your theme on a 300 year old soliloquy doesn't mean squat when you need to figure out "how many orbits can this scacecraft survive with this amount of fuel?.
/ applied math major
// I laughed at my general ed peers
/// pissed them off by zoning off in class, then spending 5 minutes ahead of class preparing for an exam/
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Snort on Monday July 11 2022, @01:14PM
I was lead to believe giant bags of space trash would be picked up regularly by the United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol. https://youtu.be/bOhOWuooYVY?t=100 [youtu.be]