Europe develops net gun to capture space junk
The competition heats up: A Polish company has developed a gun for firing a net to capture space junk, and has demonstrated its operation by capturing a flying drone at a space junk conference.
There is a video at the link showing the capture. They have also tested this technology on a vomit comet, and hope to launch a full scale model by 2023.
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The competition heats up: A Polish company has developed a gun for firing a net to capture space junk, and has demonstrated its operation by capturing a flying drone at a space junk conference.
There is a video at the link showing the capture. They have also tested this technology on a vomit comet, and hope to launch a full scale model by 2023.
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
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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.
I guess I don’t get it. So, a tumbling satellite gets wrapped in a net. So now you’ve got a tumbling satellite and net.
Unless that net is tethered to something with rockets attached to it, how can it stabilize the satellite? If the net is attached to something with rockets, how does it effectively prevent itself from becoming entangled in its own net that is now attached to a tumbling satellite?
Funny you should ask. I have been thinking about this problem for a while and have looked at a few patents, as I am thinking of patenting my own idea. I am concerned about many of these ideas, as well as my own, as they have the potential of making matters worse by causing their targets to come apart and result in more debris, not less.
The main idea behind the patents I have examined is to deorbit the debris, removing it from space and having it burn up during reentry. Some of the patents, with the net in the article, only handle part 1 of this process making physical contact with the debris, not the reentry problem. The article only mentions the reentry maneuver without explaining how the tumbling is dealt with, or even whether it needs to be stopped; maybe it can continue to spin within the net on the end of a rope, while the rocket portion does a reentry burn.
Interestingly, many satellites have materials that could be useful to future space-based manufacturers, so grappling them for transport to a manufacturing facility may end up being preferred to deorbit (assuming salvage is legally allowed with space flotsam).
Since carbon is not common on the Moon, and since carbon-carbon composites are common satellite construction material, it may be worth transporting that carbon to a future lunar base or colony for use as fertilizer for crops.
How about a simple, self supporting and semi permanent solution?
Large objects do not need to be captured and de-orbited so much as just nudged into a lower orbit.
Harpoon a rocket to it and just push or drag it to a lower orbit.
As for all that little stuff that everyone is really worried about. How about a satellite based laser that is in a higher orbit than the junk you want to clear away.
The satellite tracks and targets everything smaller than a shoebox and fires on it as it passes.
The laser vaporizes a bit of the junk on the side away from the earth. The result being that the object is pushed into an ever lower orbit.
It doesn’t even have to push it all the way in on the first pass but can take all the time it needs and as many hits as it needs.
At a low enough power the Earths atmosphere should be more than enough to protect us from any misses.
But wouldn’t any rope attached to the net wind itself about the tumbling satellite, in effect, reeling in the net launching vehicle?
Even if you could align the net launcher with the axis of the satellite’s tumbling motion, that axis would unpredictability change as soon as the net made contact with the satellite!
The Company can be named: TA DA!
Vacuum Cleaners!
Or maybe even “SafeTkleen” (sort of like in the “Expanse”)
The challenge is to collect for reuse/recycle/repurpose orbital “space junk”
Hazardous/Toxic waste isn’t a problem because its hazardous or toxic. Its a problem because its WASTED!
All the “space junk” is valuable because its already been refined and because of the expense of lifting it to orbit. As much as possible should be collected and stored for eventual transport to the manufacturing facility at the LaGrange space dock.
I share all the reservations expressed here about the practicality of this particular idea, but also share the sense that the proper fate of trackable pieces of space debris is to be recycled, in space. An article of mine that appeared in the May 9 Space Review makes the case that space debris should be the initial target of subscale prototype asteroid mining hardware.
Pzatchok’s laser idea parallels my own thinking on how to deal with space debris pieces too small to track. In my case, I concluded that attempting to use the laser beam to track as well as brake the debris pieces was likely wasted effort. A powerful lidar could track smaller objects than an Earth-based radar, but not usefully down to say the paint chip and flyspeck size range. The laser should, instead, simply collimate its beam to perhaps a few inches across and raster scan it in a segment of space known to be clear of larger objects, dead or active. Over time, this would eliminate all debris smaller than the minimum size trackable from the ground leaving the latter to be policed up and recycled by prototype asteroid miners and/or purpose-built salvage tugs.
Dick Eagleson
The raster scan idea is a great one. I agree it should be used.
But there is a lot of stuff up there larger than paint chips but still small enough to pass through a net of some type.
I think both ideas have their place.
As for the idea of salvaging the sats.
Nice idea but the safety aspect with any trace fuels on board. Who wants to bring it onto their station and start to take it apart?
Buy the time we got any recycling facility up there the technology would be so far out of date all thats left to do with the things is to melt them down in to raw materials. And thats a real closed environment problem.
Plus things fall out of the Lagrange points. They are not perfectly stable.
BSJ asked: “But wouldn’t any rope attached to the net wind itself about the tumbling satellite, in effect, reeling in the net launching vehicle?”
Not necessarily. If you have a bearing between the net and the end of the rope, you can allow for spin, like a yoyo or a fishing lure. The rocket on the other end of the rope would be able to deal with the spinning mass by thrusting in retrograde direction, and the mass might act similar to a yoyo in a low G environment until the reentry speed was reached. Then the rocket releases the rope or the net, and moves on to its next target.
pzatchok,
A recycler may not have to bring hardware inside the manned section until after it has been safed, or maybe he does all his recycling “outdoors,” perhaps “on the patio” or in a “shed.” A lot might be able to be done remotely.
L4 and L5 are fairly stable, although I do not know the long-term effects of the sun continuously tugging on things there. L1, L2, and L3 are inherently unstable, so stationkeeping propellant would be needed to maintain those orbits. Then again, geostationary orbits require occasional stationkeeping due to the continuous tugging by the Moon and the sun.
pzatchok and Dick,
I think you have a good idea, and you guys might want to get together to patent it. It certainly has fewer problems than my idea and some of the other patents. For one, you wouldn’t have the problem of generating additional debris. Also, it works on eliminating the small stuff, and few of the patents I examined dealt with the small stuff.
Dick,
Nice article. It seems to me that we cannot count on governments to do the kind of development that we had imagined half a century ago, but we can count on private companies to figure out how to make a profit doing so (profit being the reward for finding ways to do things better). As you wrote in the article, “the key to the human future in space is to start small, start cheap, and start close.”