The Mad Plan to Clean Up Space Junk With a Laser Cannon
Click to Open Overlay Gallery The mother of all laser cannons, inStar Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Lucasfilm
If a team of astronomers has itsway, the International Space Station will be outfitted with a spiffy laser-wielding telescope. No, no, hold onits not to kill aliens or rebel civilizations. Its to clean up a hugemess.
If anything rivals the human drive for exploration, it is the apparent need to leave a spectacular plume of trash in ourwake. In space, the problem is becoming acute. Decades of discarded satellites and unchecked collisions have left some 3,000 tons of debris in orbit. Thats roughly 15 blue whales, 600 elephants, or 1,500 cars.
Mankinds slovenly ways threaten our continued use of space-based satellites, which have become a core component of modern technological infrastructure. Youve probably used those satellites dozens of ways so far today. Have you sent a text? Watched TV? Used GPS? Checked the weather? If youd like to keep doing thesethings, astronomers will soon need to find a way of tidying up low Earth orbit. In that region, between 100 and 1,250miles above the planet, mere flecks of paint (of which there are many) travel with sufficientforce to sever electrical wires, dent spacecraft, and kill astronauts.
Lasers could be the saviors in operation Orbital Clean House. A team of astronomers at Japans RIKEN, a network of basic-research laboratories, have proposed adding debris-zapping capabilities to a telescope they are already developing for the ISS. They plan to start on a small scale, with a laser no more powerful than the pointer you use to play with your cat . In time, the power could be increased to become a proper laser cannon. (Yes, dear reader, a laser cannon .)
If the notion of lasers in space sounds slightly terrifying, youre not alone. The problem with it is mostly political, says Don Kessler, who spent more than 30 years at NASAs Johnson Space Center. Everyone is afraid you are going to weaponize space. Kessler began the field of studying orbital debris and lends his name to Kessler syndrome, a scenario in whichcolliding debris begins a cascade of increasing debris and destruction.
If you can take out a derelict satellite or rocket body, you also have the ability tokill a working satellite. And given how important satellites are to militaries, an attack could prompt a war. But if astronomers are going to put a laser cannon anywhere above Earth, the ISS would be the place to do it. Bolting the proposed laser to the ostensibly neutral space stationwhich already must make frequent maneuvers to avoid larger, tracked pieces of debrismight be a way to make a scientifically sound idea politically sound as well.
For the team at RIKEN, the proposed laser cannon is a way to not only clean up their beloved orbits but also make their telescope, the Extreme Universe Space Observatory ,more practically relevant, says projectscientist Marco Casolino. With its wide field of view and the ability to register even the quickest flashes of light, the scope would be well suited for spotting debris as it whizzes past the ISS.
The European Union is supporting a project called Stardust which is analyzing how to handle space debris and threatening asteroids (items they callnon-cooperative targets)and may settle on lasers as the best plan. Stardust is led by Massimiliano Vasile, of the University of Strathclydes Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Vasile and his team previously came up with a proposal to use a swarm of navigable laser-equipped satellites to launch coordinated attacks against non-cooperative targets. The project was known, appropriately, as Laser Bees .
In the United States, the National Aeronautics and Space Administrationwhich publishes Orbital Debris Quarterly News , a must read for space junk enthusiastsproposes fighting space debris with a ground-based laser . (No NASA official could be reached before deadline for comment.)Non-lasery ideas are abundant too, coming in the form of reusable spacecraft launched off modified jumbo jets or electrodynamic space tethers to slow orbiting junk by accosting it with electricity.
But right now, even a debris-fighting proposal less off-the-wall than a laser cannon would have trouble getting off the ground. Thats because theres very little momentum behind orbital cleanup projects.My biggest complaint is that nobody has tested these concepts, Kessler says. And right now there is absolutely no money being spent by the US to do that.
The worldis on the path to industrializing space, Kessler says, without properly acting like it. The way countries and businesses have operated in space so far has created an unstable, chaotic space environment. Your first clue should be when you look at a picture of our solar system, he says, everything is in the same plane going the same direction. You look at a picture of the satellites going around the Earth, and theyre going every which way.
Laser cannons are one short-term solution, but in the long run, managing low Earth orbit will more than a game of shoot-em-up. Kessler would like to see the satellites already in space corralled together. New satellites (at least portions) could be constructed by reusing the materials from old satellites.
And eventually, theyd all need to orbit in the same direction, too. Right now, its all too easy for satellites to run into each other head on (such as when Iridium 33 collided with Cosmos 2251 in 2009, spraying low Earth orbit with tens of thousands of pieces of debris). The current orbit of satellites, Kessler says, looks similar to the early days of the universe. Everything was running into each other and colliding, he says. Those collisions created a lot of dust. As the dust collided with itself, it decreased the momentum of the orbiting objects to the point where the only stable things that were objects that were moving in the same direction.
Its the way galaxy formed, its the way the solar system formed, its the way the moon formed around our earth, Kessler says. Perhaps mankind could learn something from their ultimate configuration. Until then, bring on the laser cannons.
Gohttp://www.wired.com/2015/05/laser-cannon-space-debris/
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Realty in space exploration continues to move forward with technologies we were introduced to in space fantasy films and stories.
A laser cannon as a vacuum cleaner for space debris
Fact and fiction merged
It is a mess up there. A dangerous one too!
They should make it a national engineering competition. Beer and engineers, what could possibly go wrong?
Beer plus engineers, equals this.
I don't guess they could take some giant filament net and corral it all into one place, dropping it into the atmosphere to burn up when they gather enough parts...
While the implications could be far-reaching, (weaponized space), it would be very beneficial to clear up all this junk floating around up there...
No joke!
FLY
Hardly anything I am sure
Kavika
Actually that is public disorganization as opposed to public infrastructure
Hal
Short of destroying this debris, at some point t will begin to interfere with and damage communication, GPS, weather and surveillance satellites.
It actually seems like a fairly feasible approach to the problem
Absolutely correct
Think about it Hal, without some action the amount of space debris is going to begin to disrupt much needed satellite operations.
There is risk with all actions, unintended consequences, but this is a step worth taking in my view
Hal
So you have a process to accomplish the same clean up
Please share that process
Sounds like "head in sand" approach
Never a good way to deal with an actual problem in my view
We disagree it is clear, but I thank you for the back and forth
BC 2016
The proposed process is a method of removing space debris, not a weapons system.
This is not a political issue in my view, but rather something that is (or soon will be) needed to insure that space debris does not interfere with or impede technology requirements