Space trash lasers, explained
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Published 2024-02-29
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Humans are filling the space around Earth with trash. Most of this junk comes from abandoned satellites, discarded jet engines, and other mission-related debris. And when these objects unintentionally collide, they explode into thousands of debris fragments that can seriously damage operational spacecraft. With a booming commercial space industry that has put an unprecedented number of new satellites in space in just the past few years, our space debris problem is only getting worse.
Scientists worry about a situation called the “Kessler syndrome,” coined in the 1970s, where a runaway chain reaction of collisions and fragmentation results in a cloud of debris around Earth so dense that it threatens future space missions.
But there are a few options to begin clearing out the debris surrounding us, most of them united in a strategy of slowing the objects down enough to de-orbit them — forcing them to reenter Earth’s atmosphere to be destroyed. For the largest category of debris, fragments measuring more than 10 centimeters in size, one solution would be to send a small spacecraft into orbit, where it would rendezvous with the large piece of debris and slow its orbit either by pushing or pulling it.
For the smallest class of debris, which spans a range of 1 millimeter to 1 centimeter in size, there are two main ideas. One would be to put a physical sweeper into orbit to catch or slow these tiny, untrackable fragments. The other would be to introduce a cloud of metal dust into orbit to weigh them down and drag them into Earth’s atmosphere.
For the class of space debris in the middle, measuring between 1 and 10 centimeters, the idea of using ground- and space-based lasers as a cleanup method has circulated for years. In this approach, a laser would use radar to track a piece of debris as it flies into view and then blast a pulse of energy at it. The goal is to nudge the debris enough to disrupt its orbit, ideally enough to slow it down.
Right now, NASA considers this the most cost-effective way to deal with most space debris, but it will take commitment from the international space community to implement any space debris removal strategies.
Further reading:
For more stories like this, check out Future Perfect, Vox's section focused on finding solutions to the world's biggest problems: www.vox.com/future-perfect
NASA's Cost and Benefit Analysis of Orbital Debris Remediation
www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/otps_-_cos…
NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office:
orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/
The European Space Agency's latest on space debris:
www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris
Claude Phipps' 2014 paper, "L'ADROIT - A spaceborne ultraviolet laser system for space debris clearing"
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014AcAau.104..243P/abst…
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All Comments (21)
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Imagine your space-based anti-debris laser gets hit by space debris.
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"before its too late". The bane of human existence
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Imagine us being able to address an existential issue before it became an issue 😵💫
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It’s ironic they say the sweeper is to expensive but don’t ever acknowledge the unthinkable costs that will be incurred when we lose most or all GPS and global communications satellites.
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Everytime your mum tells you to put the trash in the bin, make sure to throw it into space
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I cant imagine Wall-E visually predict how vast the space debris are
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That's too risky. I highly recommend picking up them one by one with hands.
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Kudos to Vox for consistently using metric units.
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Humans are... dirtballs; even in space. 😂😂😂
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There was a paper quite recently that looked at the electromagnetic impact of conductive spacecraft junk in our orbit, the findings make the tungsten dust idea sound like a planned extinction event.
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You know we have a serious problem with trash/waste management when even in space- it is abundent.
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Oh sure, we can have laserbeams in space but when will I get my sharks with frigging laser beams attached to their heads!? 😤
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This is so weird. I literally had a dream about this exact concept last night, and here we are: a video about it this morning.
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My cats would love this
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Awesome, thanks a lot for bringing space lasers to people's attention! Really well-made video. I have been an avid supporter of space-based laser removal since 2018 and published a paper on its feasibility (small-scale debris removal using space-based lasers, by L.Pieters and R.Noomen). One small correction: at 6:18 you mention the space-based laser would have a more favourable angle wrt the debris object. While this is true, the orientation you show isn't the most favourable. You want to be hitting the debris objects as head-on as you can. This way you decrease the velocity, which makes the object de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere the fastest. Let's hope this method gets realised in the near future.
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Finally, a video on laser brooms. The concept of using nets to catch trash has always seemed ridiculous. A drop in the ocean. But a laser broom can be located in a single location and target orders of magnitude more pieces of debris than even a fleet of net satellites.
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It's still mind-boggling to think that lasers were once considered "a solution in search of a problem" lol
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One thing this video didn't show is the immense scale of space. In the graphics, it looks like the pieces of debris are nearly touching, while in reality it would be like a couple of thousands of rubber duckies in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Is creating a Space Roomba is still too difficult to do?
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Lasers in space 👍 Count me in 😂
