ESA JAXA: Japan scientists test tether to clear up space junk

This artist's impression released September 1, 2011 by the European Space Agency shows the debris field in low-Earth orbit based on current data, not items in their actual size or density

Japanese space scientists are set to trial a tether they hope will help pull junk out of orbit around Earth, clearing up tonnes of planetary clutter, they said Thursday.

Researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have developed what they called an electrodynamic tether made from thin wires of stainless steel and aluminium.

The idea is that one end of the strip will be attached to one of the thousands of dead satellites or bits of rocket that are jamming up space and endangering working equipment.

The electricity generated by the tether as it swings through the Earth's magnetic field is expected to have a slowing effect on the space junk, which should, scientists say, pull it into a lower and lower orbit.

Eventually the detritus will enter the Earth's atmosphere, burning up harmlessly long before it has chance to crash to the planet's surface.

"The experiment is specifically designed to contribute to developing a space debris cleaning method," said Masahiro Nohmi, associate professor at Kagawa University, who is working with JAXA on the project, told reporters.

Nohmi said a satellite developed by the university is expected to be launched into space on February 28, with the tether aboard.

Graphic on debris and defunct space hardware that currently orbit the earth

"We have two main objectives in the trial next month," he said.

"First, to extend a 300-metre (1,000-foot) tether in orbit and secondly to observe the transfer of electricity."

The actual reeling in of orbiting rubbish will be the objective of future experiments, he said.

A spokesman for JAXA said the agency also plans to conduct its own trial on a tether in 2015.

More than 20,000 bits of cast off equipment, including old satellites, pieces of rocket and other fragments are uselessly orbiting the Earth in a band 800-1,400 kilometres (500-900 miles) from the surface of the planet at terrific speed.

Their presence causes problems for space scientists who have to try to prevent them colliding with functioning kit because of the huge damage they can cause.

NASA Space Junk: How much is there?

Credit: NASA/ J.-C. Li

This chart shows statistics relating to space junk circling the Earth

Space Debris: Swiss aim to launch first space cleaner

Swiss scientists announced Wednesday plans to develop a machine that acts almost like a vacuum cleaner to scoop up thousands of abandoned satellite and rocket parts, cleaning up outer space.

The Swiss Space Centre at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), a top science university, announced the launch of CleanSpace as the first installment of a family of satellites designed to clear up space debris.

According to EPFL, "16,000 objects larger than 10 centimetres in diameter and hundreds of millions of smaller particles are ripping around the earth at speeds of several kilometres per second."

"It has become essential to be aware of the existence of this debris and the risks that are run by its proliferation," said Claude Nicollier, an astronaut and EPFL professor.

The space centre said it was moving beyond rhetoric to "take immediate action to get this stuff out of orbit."

Centre spokesman Jerome Grosse said two options are being considered for the cleaning satellites.

One is a machine that scoops up debris and then burns itself up in Earth's atmosphere.

The second is a model capable of retrieving the debris, which is then ejected into the atmosphere while the cleaner remains in space.

"We want to offer and sell a whole family of ready-made systems, designed as sustainably as possible, that are able to de-orbit several different kinds of satellites," explained centre director Volker Gass.

"Space agencies are increasingly finding it necessary to take into consideration and prepare for the elimination of the stuff theyre sending into space. We want to be the pioneers in this area."

EPL cited a 2011 study by Swiss Re insurance company showing that every year there is almost a one in 10,000 chance that an orbiting satellite measuring 10 square metres will collide with a piece of space debris larger than one centimetre.

House made of recycled and salvaged car scraps and local wood

Click on the image to see more

While the McGee house may look like any other new designer home in the neighborhood, its walls tell a different story.

Designed by husband and wife team Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger of Leger Wanaselja (ecological) Architecture, the upper outside walls of the house are made from over 100 salvaged car roofs.

In a pursuit to build a house that utilized green technologies and reused materials, the couple sourced car roofs from a selection of gray-colored cars that had been left for parts in local junk yards in Berkeley, California.

Their biggest challenge was sourcing car scraps that were in relatively good condition, without dents and with a good paint finish. The scraps were then cut into long tile-like shapes and used to complete the upper outside walls of the house, rendering a similar appearance to slate.

NASA’s SkyLAb litter bill: Cleaning up after Space Debris

A “fine” imposed on NASA for littering Australia with debris from a crashing space station has finally been paid – 30 years late. 

The agency had apparently ignored the penalty issued after Skylab broke up on re-entry in a spectacular fireball in July 1979.

The 75-ton space station – America’s first – was home to a succession of astronauts in the early Seventies but thankfully it had long been abandoned when it crashed to Earth.

The night-time re-entry scattered fragments over western Australia. Parts fell on Esperance, a small town 360 miles east of Perth.

Town officials decided to fine NASA for dropping litter – and sent them a bill for the equivalent of 400 US dollars to cover the cost of the clean-up.

NASA ignored it and local councillors decided to write it off. But with the 30th anniversary of the crash coming up, they erected billboards around Esperance reminding people of the outstanding debt. Now listeners to a US radio station have clubbed together to wipe the slate clean.

Radio host Scott Barley, of California’s Highway Radio, heard about the fine and issued an appeal on his morning show for funds. The whip-round collected the $400 needed. The cheque has been sent already and Scott will fly to Australia next weekend for an official handover.

The billboards have now been stamped with a bright red sign: Paid in full!

OK, it is a great publicity stunt for the station. But Scott said: “I thought this unpaid bill was rather funny. I reckoned it would be great if I challenged my listeners to contribute to pay off this long-outstanding debt.”

After the re-entry, the San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 prize for the first piece of Skylab to be delivered to their offices. A 17-year-old lad, Stan Thornton, picked up some chunks from the roof of his home in Esperance and caught the first flight to San Francisco, where he collected his prize.

SBSS: Air Force satellite monitoring space junk

Clumsily orbiting near, alongside and occasionally straight into some of the world’s most valuable communications and research equipment, space junk is, without a doubt, a serious problem.

To make matters worse, so much of it is literal junk, from decommissioned satellites to unidentifiable metal debris, which is extremely difficult to track–at least, until now.

The Air Force’s awkwardly named Space-Based Space Surveillance satellite (SBSS), due to launch this weekend after nearly a year of delay, isn’t meant to be a cleanup tool. Instead, its primarily goal is to simply find out where the junk is: to track it, to measure it, and to provide scientists enough data to calculate its location.

Space junk has been a creeping concern for years, but it’s quickly becoming urgent. Current estimates place the number of significant man-made objects orbiting around the Earth near 500,000, less than 5% of which is in any way tracked.

It’s difficult to convey what that number means in terms of risk. Graphics like the one above make it seem like an orbiting shuttle would be viciously perforated in the course of a single orbit, while simple mathematical representations border on meaningless.

(500,000 pieces of space junk spread evenly along a typical orbital path of the ISS would come out to one piece every 282 feet. Add two more dimensions to this calculation and it loses force; leave them out and it doesn’t bear much resemblance to reality.)

In any case, minor collisions have been documented during shuttle missions, and the ISS has taken evasive action against incoming debris on at least eight occasions in the last 10 years.

The SBSS will use its orbital vantage point, and specifically designed instruments, to track debris with an acuity that ground-based equipment lacks, due to lack of mobility, lack of visibility and general unwieldiness. Among the gear on the satellite,

The SBSS spacecraft will be equipped with a visible sensor mounted on an agile, two-axis gimbal. This device will give ground controllers the flexibility to quickly move the camera between targets without needing to reposition the satellite itself or expend additional fuel.

The data collected by the SBSS should help keep orbiting equipment and crews safer in the short term, and eventually, or rather hopefully, contribute to future efforts to reduce space junk, none of which have, for lack of a better phrase, made it off the ground.

Image courtesy of the ESA