There are very hazardous waste of tiny sizes in space, almost undetectable. Therefore, scientists designed a satellite with instruments capable of detecting objects up to a centimeter. The space waste hunter will avoid damage to satellites and other spacecraft in low terrestrial orbit. The idea is promoted by the United States government. They seek to equip future satellites with technology to avoid collisions with space waste.
Space waste travels at high speeds, around 28,000 kilometers per hour. An centimeter object that travels at that speed is explosive as a hand grenade. They are out -of -service satellite residues, stages of worn rockets, collision fragments and others.
Invisible enemies
The research professor at the UAF Geophysical Institute Paul Bernhardt devised a method. Determine the distance of a small object to a satellite or spacecraft and the angle of its approach. An object in orbit creates waves when passing through plasma disturbances that occur naturally, known as stretch marks. They are along the lines of the Earth’s magnetic field. Plasma is a state of matter similar to gas made of electrons and ions that float freely.
Bernhardt and his colleagues are developing the instruments that would use that method. It is also designing the satellite that will carry the instruments for this initial test. He calls him space waste hunter. “It will detect too small space waste to be seen from Earth,” he said in a statement.
Avoiding collisions
“Several measurements of this type are enough to predict the future trajectory of waste,” he said. “That is the new science we are exploring.” This will allow satellites to deviate from waste trajectory. Starlink system operators take more than 20,000 actions to avoid collisions per year.
The space waste hunter will have a lot of work to do. The new detection method was detailed in an article on January 8 in Physics of Plasmas. More than 100 million objects of more than one millimeter of size orbit around the Earth. It only tracks less than 1 percent of waste that can cause damage that ends space missions.
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