Like a "Roomba" for space! Well maybe not quite but damn close. Swiss scientists have announced (according to NY Daily News) that they plan on launching what they are calling a “janitor satellite” to clean up space junk.
The $11-million satellite called "CleanSpace One" is one type of a family of proposed robot satellites first of which are planned to launch within three to five years. CleanSpace One's first tasks are to capture two Swiss owned satellites which were launched in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
As many of you know, this is a bit of a pet peeve for me. NASA alone tracks hundreds of thousand pieces of space junk large enough to damage or destroy other spacecraft, with upwards of several million pieces capable of significant damage to being lethal to EVAing astronauts.
The biggest problem to capturing space junk sounds like it should be the simplest, getting close enough to effect a capture. As any space jockey knows, translations in space are costly because all the fuel that the maneuvering engines use has to be transported from deep in Earth's gravity well, making it extremely costly. However new ultra-compact motors are first on the Swiss' drawing board. Next as we have seen time and time again, just getting a good solid grip on hardware in space is difficult at best. The Swiss are looking into revolutionary new effectors that would grab and securely hold it for disposal. And ultimately the satellite must be able to translate the captured hardware and itself back into the Earth's atmosphere where it will safely burn up.
The $11-million satellite called "CleanSpace One" is one type of a family of proposed robot satellites first of which are planned to launch within three to five years. CleanSpace One's first tasks are to capture two Swiss owned satellites which were launched in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
As many of you know, this is a bit of a pet peeve for me. NASA alone tracks hundreds of thousand pieces of space junk large enough to damage or destroy other spacecraft, with upwards of several million pieces capable of significant damage to being lethal to EVAing astronauts.
The biggest problem to capturing space junk sounds like it should be the simplest, getting close enough to effect a capture. As any space jockey knows, translations in space are costly because all the fuel that the maneuvering engines use has to be transported from deep in Earth's gravity well, making it extremely costly. However new ultra-compact motors are first on the Swiss' drawing board. Next as we have seen time and time again, just getting a good solid grip on hardware in space is difficult at best. The Swiss are looking into revolutionary new effectors that would grab and securely hold it for disposal. And ultimately the satellite must be able to translate the captured hardware and itself back into the Earth's atmosphere where it will safely burn up.
