At the same time we celebrate progress in space science (like yesterdays article on the Chinese Chang’e 3), we should give attention to projects that focus on the environmental aspects of these space trips. Anyone who recently saw the movie Gravity knows what collisions with space debris can cause for space trips or satellites in use.
It´s a fact that space debris has become an increasing threat for future expeditions. The number of uncontrolled pieces of satellites or rockets orbiting the earth is huge and sometimes they come into the atmosphere to burn up on its way down. Today NASA keeps track on approximately 20 000 metal pieces bigger than 5 cm. There are over a half million objects smaller than this, big enough to be a threat for orbiting satellites. These small pieces is a result from earlier collisions between used rockets and satellites. The speed of these pieces is approximate 28 000 km/h, fast enough to cause real explosions when collisions occur.
Even if we look at these metal pieces from satellites and rockets as just “waste”, we are very much mistaken here. The waste is not waste! Instead it´s circling goldmines for smart nations in need of valuble metals for tech industry. So far no nation has come up with a solution on how the metal pieces could be taken care off. Instead we see technical leading nations, like Japan, planning to take care of the the space debris to just destroy it.
In February 2014 Japan plans to send up a 700 meter wide magnetic net, made of aluminium and stainless steel, to try to catch orbiting metal pieces. The metal will be captured and taken down to the Earth´s atmosphere in order to burn on it´s way down. There are clear risks with this project, one is the time needed to catch the space debris (1 year) and the second is the risk for collisions or to catch satellites in use.
This is Japans first step in the ambition to find methods to clean space from metal “waste”. If the project is successful, and as long as there is no protests from other nations, they plan in next step to send up a 10 000 meter long magnetic net to catch as much metal pieces as possible.
Image source: EMA , Gravity
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