British test satellite uses net to capture target
A British test satellite has successfully used a net to capture a cubesat target, demonstrating the technology that someday could be used to clean space junk from Earth orbit.
“It worked just as we hoped it would,” said Prof Guglielmo Aglietti, director of the Surrey Space Centre. “The target was spinning like you would expect an uncooperative piece of junk to behave, but you can see clearly that the net captures it, and we’re very happy with the way the experiment went.”
If this were a real capture, the net would be tethered to the deploying satellite, which would then tug the junk out of the sky. As this was just a demonstration, the net and the box (which was actually pushed out from RemoveDebris to act as a target) will be allowed to fall to Earth on their own. Their low altitude means it should take only a couple of months before they burn up in the atmosphere.
I have embedded below the fold a video showing the net capture. It is quite spectacular. This was one of three different experiments on RemoveDebris that are testing space junk removal methods. The next is the use of a harpoon.
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A British test satellite has successfully used a net to capture a cubesat target, demonstrating the technology that someday could be used to clean space junk from Earth orbit.
“It worked just as we hoped it would,” said Prof Guglielmo Aglietti, director of the Surrey Space Centre. “The target was spinning like you would expect an uncooperative piece of junk to behave, but you can see clearly that the net captures it, and we’re very happy with the way the experiment went.”
If this were a real capture, the net would be tethered to the deploying satellite, which would then tug the junk out of the sky. As this was just a demonstration, the net and the box (which was actually pushed out from RemoveDebris to act as a target) will be allowed to fall to Earth on their own. Their low altitude means it should take only a couple of months before they burn up in the atmosphere.
I have embedded below the fold a video showing the net capture. It is quite spectacular. This was one of three different experiments on RemoveDebris that are testing space junk removal methods. The next is the use of a harpoon.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
So now, there is space debris with a net wrapped around it. Considering the expense, you think they would have included something to test the second part of what is required.
wodun,
These tests are more along the lines of proof of concept rather than a system test. It looks like the net worked as desired, not leaving more debris (i.e. not leaving broken satellite outside the net) than they were trying to eliminate.
To do a system test would have required a larger, more expensive satellite. According to the article, the tests are being performed low enough that the satellites will reenter within a few months, so they are not leaving hazardous debris in orbit.
Once they know which concepts work, they can then concentrate the second part of the process on that or those methods. Proof of concept tests want to be relatively inexpensive, because if the concept does not work then not much has been wasted.
The video notes:
“The cubesat is left to deorbit at an accelerated rate”.
So that seems to be the mechanism to eliminate the debris.
I’m not clear on the balloon deployed by the cubesat.
Was the sat equipped with the balloon so it would deorbit in case the net missed?
Anyway it’s cool the way the sat seems to struggle like a bug caught in a spider’s web.
Mitch S,
My understanding is that the balloon idea, the “drag sail” was to passively accelerate the deorbit of debris. I do not know whether the intention is for the harpoon to be on a tether so that the harpooned test article deorbits along with the mother satellite, but my recollection from previous news of this test satellite is that the “drag sail” is intended to assist reentry and destruction without the complication or expense of retrograde rockets.
The less expensive that it is to remove junk from space, the more likely and faster that junk will be removed.