Remove Debris Satellite

Toroid

Founding Member
The Remove Debris satellite was launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. It will use a harpoon & net to drag space junk.
Europe Launches a Satellite to Remove Space Debris
The mission will deploy net and harpoon to drag space junk orbiting around the Earth
A satellite designed to grab space debris has been successfully launched to the International Space Station.

The RemoveDebris satellite was carried by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and contains a net and harpoon that will be used for removing the 7,000 tons of space junk orbiting the Earth.

Space debris is a big problem for space agencies today. After 60 years of space exploration, the low Earth orbit is cluttered with many defunct satellites and their broken pieces. This debris around the Earth could lead to catastrophic collisions with spacecrafts, especially those with humans aboard and pose a major threat for future space missions.

Researchers have developed RemoveDebris satellite to clean up space. The satellite can grab floating space debris with the help of net and harpoon. Once captured, the junk could be dragged lower in the Earth orbit and burned up as it enters the atmosphere. Researchers claim that RemoveDebris is first low-cost space litter-picking technology in the world.

“The ones we are testing - the net and the harpoon - are simple and low cost, but could be considered more risky in certain circumstances than a robotic arm. On the other hand, if your piece of debris is spinning very fast, it becomes very difficult to capture it with a robotic arm and an approach with a net could work better." Mission’s principal investigator Professor Guglielmo Aglietti from University of Surrey's Space Centre told BBC.

“The reason we are doing this mission this way is because it is low cost. In my opinion, whether or not there are going to be real missions to remove debris will depend on cost. And I worry that if they are extremely expensive, people will think about other priorities."

RemoveDebris system will be tested in late May.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uWAmQz18E8
 

nivek

As Above So Below
I don't know why all these micro satellites are allowed into orbit. It's a disaster waiting to happen. The problem was well depicted in the movie WALL-E.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiIZaDfPHqQ


I agree, we do not need all of those small things in lower orbit, there is enough rubbish circling our planet...We need to have better ideas when launching anything into space to keep discarded objects to a minimum...Seems everywhere man goes he leaves trash behind...

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Toroid

Founding Member
Here's the number of objects United States Strategic Command tracks in orbit.
Space debris - Wikipedia
As of 5 July 2016[update], the United States Strategic Command tracked a total of 17,852 artificial objects in orbit above the Earth,[1] including 1,419 operational satellites.[2] However, these are just objects large enough to be tracked. As of July 2013[update], more than 170 million debris smaller than 1 cm (0.4 in), about 670,000 debris 1–10 cm, and around 29,000 larger debris were estimated to be in orbit.[3] Collisions with debris have become a hazard to spacecraft; they cause damage akin to sandblasting, especially to solar panels and optics like telescopes or star trackers that cannot be covered with a ballistic Whipple shield (unless it is transparent).[4]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O64KM4GuRPk
 

Toroid

Founding Member
The RemoveDebris mission netted an object in space.
Watch a Satellite Net a Cubesat in Awesome Space Junk Cleanup Test
The video is stunning: A satellite in orbit fires a net to snare a nearby target in the pioneering demonstration of space-junk-cleanup technology.

The space net demonstration, which occurred Sunday (Sept. 16), is part of the European RemoveDebris mission, designed to test active debris-removal techniques in space for the first time. The target wasn't an actual piece of space junk but a small cubesat measuring (4 x 4 x 8 inches) that was released by the main RemoveDebris spacecraft shortly before the capture experiment.

"It went very well," said RemoveDebris mission principal investigator Guglielmo Aglietti, director of the Surrey Space Centre at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. "The net deployed nicely, and so did the structure attached to the cubesat. We are now downloading the data, which will take a few weeks, since we only can do that when we have contact with the satellite. But so far, everything looks great." [7 Ways to Clean Up Space Junk]

RemoveDebris is a refrigerator-size spacecraft built by satellite manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), which is part of the RemoveDebris consortium together with the University of Surrey, the aerospace company Airbus and other European companies. It's designed to test space-junk-cleanup methods in orbit. In addition to the debris-catching net, the satellite is equipped with a small harpoon, a visual-tracking system and a drag sail.

Novel space-junk-cleanup tech
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This video still shows the moment the RemoveDebris spacecraft's net captured a space-junk target in a first-of-its-kind test of debris-cleanup technology. The test occurred in orbit on Sept. 16, 2018.
Credit: Surrey Nanosats
The net demonstration is the first test so far for RemoveDebris, and it began when the satellite released its cubesat target on Sunday.

Once the cubesat drifted about 19 feet (6 meters) from the chaser RemoveDebris craft, the satellite deployed a 3-foot-wide (1 m) inflatable structure that increased the object's size to match that of a real target. Then, the chaser satellite ejected the net using a spring-loaded mechanism. The entire sequence was preprogrammed and took about 2 to 3 minutes to complete, Aglietti said.

He told Space.com that the RemoveDebris team couldn't use an actual piece of space junk, because international laws consider even defunct satellites to be property of the entity that launched them. Thus, it would be illegal to catch other people's space debris, he said.

Ingo Retat, who led the team at European space manufacturer Airbus, which designed the net, said it took six years of testing in parabolic flights, special drop towers and vacuum chambers for the engineers to gain enough confidence to send the technology to space.

"Our small team of engineers and technicians have done an amazing job moving us one step closer to clearing up low Earth orbit," Retat said in a statement.

Interest in active space-debris-removal technology has increased in recent years as the number of spacecraft and satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) has risen. Too much debris from defunct satellites or rockets could threaten newer satellites in orbit, because a hit from even a tiny piece of junk could destroy a satellite, experts have said.

Satomi Kawamoto, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), said in a conference last year that more than 100 objects need to be removed from LEO at the rate of five per year to prevent the so-called Kessler syndrome — an unstoppable cascade of collisions predicted in the 1970s by NASA scientist Donald Kessler. This collision cascade would generate a massive amount of fragments and make operating in the space around Earth unsafe.

The net consists of ultra-lightweight polyethylene Dyneema, which is commonly used to make mountaineering ropes. Six weights attached to the net ensured that it would spread to its full size of 5 m (16 feet) across, said Retat.

"The weights are actually small motors that are used to close the net around the debris," Retat said. "They run on a timer that begins counting down once the net has been deployed, and [they] automatically tighten up to trap the object."

In an operational setup, the net would be connected to the chaser spacecraft with a tether. After the capture, the chaser spacecraft would fire its engines and drag the space junk into Earth's atmosphere, where the object would burn.

For this first-time attempt, the engineers left the tether out, as it could cause some unexpected complications, Aglietti said. For example, the satellite could rebound and hit the main RemoveDebris spacecraft, which still has three more experiments to run.

Aglietti said the cubesat wrapped in the net will fall out of orbit naturally over time. It should remain in orbit no more than a year.

RemoveDebris was delivered to the International Space Station in April and deployed by astronauts in June.

The 5.2-million-euro ($18.7 million) mission, funded by the European Union, will next validate a vision-based navigation system designed to track and analyze pieces of space debris. In early 2019, RemoveDebris will test another Airbus-led active-removal technology: a pen-size harpoon that will be fired into a fixed plate attached to a boom that will extend from the main spacecraft.

The campaign will conclude in March 2019, when RemoveDebris will deploy a large sail designed to increase the craft's atmospheric drag and speed up its re-entry. Ultimately, the spacecraft will burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIfRPTIgXuw
 

AD1184

Celestial
The biggest danger is posed by all the little pieces that are too small to be tracked (170 million pieces smaller than 1cm, according to the figure Toroid posted). This satellite will take a while to get all of them.
 

AD1184

Celestial
Thinking about his more, I really do not see the point of this satellite at all. It seems to be a worse-than-useless idea. The big bits of debris are not the problem, the small bits are. Firing harpoons and nets at large pieces of debris (or grabbing them with robotic arms) is going to create many more smaller, and therefore more dangerous, pieces of orbiting debris. Not to mention the launch process for any debris-mitigating satellite is going to add to the debris problem, as more small pieces are going to be added by any satellite launch.

I think the correct way to go about addressing the problem is by coming up with methods that minimize the number of small debris pieces created by orbital space missions and to make spacecraft more resilient to being struck by small debris.

There does not seem to be any sane way to actively reduce the number of dangerous pieces of debris in earth orbit.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Thinking about his more, I really do not see the point of this satellite at all. It seems to be a worse-than-useless idea. The big bits of debris are not the problem, the small bits are. Firing harpoons and nets at large pieces of debris (or grabbing them with robotic arms) is going to create many more smaller, and therefore more dangerous, pieces of orbiting debris. Not to mention the launch process for any debris-mitigating satellite is going to add to the debris problem, as more small pieces are going to be added by any satellite launch.

I think the correct way to go about addressing the problem is by coming up with methods that minimize the number of small debris pieces created by orbital space missions and to make spacecraft more resilient to being struck by small debris.

There does not seem to be any sane way to actively reduce the number of dangerous pieces of debris in earth orbit.

There must be a way of 'pushing' the smaller pieces into the earth's atmosphere to burn them up or using high power magnets to essentially scoop them up harmlessly without creating more bits and pieces...

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AD1184

Celestial
There must be a way of 'pushing' the smaller pieces into the earth's atmosphere to burn them up or using high power magnets to essentially scoop them up harmlessly without creating more bits and pieces...
The only problem with that idea is that you need a damned strong magnet.

A possible means is by using high-powered laser beams to sublimate (because things do not melt in a vacuum) small detritus into gas and dust. The trouble is targeting the laser if the dangerous pieces are too small to be tracked. The sky is very large, and laser beams are very narrow. The time and energy requirements for sweeping the sky to remove a sizeable fraction of the debris would seem unfeasible.
 
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