[ad_1]
It’s slightly smaller than a trash can and has pretty much the same purpose: to collect trash, but in space. The device is called Elsa-d and will leave Russia’s Baikonur launch site next week. Elsa-d was built by Astroscale, a trading company headquartered in Tokyo with offices in several countries, including Great Britain. Astroscale was founded seven years ago and supplies governments and (telecommunications) companies with clean-up debris from their space activities (see box).
Elsa is an acronym for End of Life Services by Astroscale. The letter “d” indicates the explanation. The device shown in the picture consists of two parts. The big chunk, with solar panels, is called service. The smallest block is its client, which is the size of the moving box. These two are glued together. But when the Elsa-d is put into orbit with a Soyuz missile, it will release its client, a few meters away, then catch up with him.
Unexpected strangers
The Elsa-d uses a magnetic arm for this purpose, and the first test should prove that it works in space. On a second experience, things get complicated. Space debris is not only suspended a few meters and remains stationary, but hovers over space on all its axes. In the second try, the client will be released again, but with one click, causing unexpected crashes. In addition, it is hundreds of meters from the service.
Elsa-d must now approach her client, measure what he is doing, and start doing the exact same rotational motions so that she can catch the client again with her magnetic arm. In a third experiment, the client will be several miles from the server, and Elsa-d must prove that she can locate and then grab a specific piece of space debris orbiting Earth.
The final part of the mission is waste disposal: the servant and his client descend to Earth and are released into the atmosphere. Due to its high speed, the resistance of the air causes heating, and the waste and its space debris are burnt. If you want to get a feel for the whole Japanese mission, you can watch the animation below.
Fatal collisions with space debris
The mission that begins next week must first and foremost demonstrate that the technology developed to eliminate space debris works. Astroscale is already working on the next step. The company was awarded a contract last month by the Japanese space agency Jaxa. Like other organizations in the United States (NASA) and Europe (ESA), JAXA understands that Earth’s immediate vicinity must be cleaned up to avoid fatal collisions by cutting out space debris.
In the first project, Jaxa wants to remove the last staircase from a missile launched earlier. The giant, which weighs several tons on Earth, floats in orbit around the planet. Picking it up and cleaning it would be a whole different story from the Elsa-d mission. However, the stage of the missile is several times larger than that of the customer. Elsa-d will play, he has no iron and cannot be grabbed with a magnetic arm.
In this case, it is likely that a robotic arm could be developed which could accommodate the obsolete part of the missile. But that’s for later. In the first part of this Japanese mission, Astroscale will launch a satellite to examine this space debris up close, at a distance of several meters, and map its immediate surroundings. This has to be done next year, after which Jaxa can think of a second step to bring the Colossus into the atmosphere to clean it up.
Microzwaartekracht
Robotic arms are the technology that ClearSpace also chooses. This young Swiss company was born three years ago from the Technical University of Lausanne and recently won the first contract offered under the new debris removal program for the European Space Agency (ESA).
In this first mission, ClearSpace will launch a four-armed robot from the Kourou launch site in Guyana in 2025. It is to use it to recover part of a missile launched in 2013. The part that is currently orbiting around Earth is very important; You will weigh over a hundred pounds on Earth.
In the microgravity of near space, almost nothing of this weight remains. It sounds useful, but it makes space debris retrieval very complicated: a little trouble and a piece of debris can disappear from view at any time. Or worse, it can be damaged and shattered into pieces, adding to the problem of space debris. Also here, the debris removal machine, simply referred to as ClearSpace-1, must first accurately determine where the piece of space debris is and how it is spinning, in order to capture the giant on a trajectory.
Swiss craftsmanship
It’s a 100 million euro project, and it’s a surprise that Esa attributes a young Swiss company to it. Switzerland is a member of the European Space Agency, but it is not a major country in the field of space flights. Why is ClearSpace a Swiss start-up? “Why not?” Founder Luc Piquet said recently in an interview with Innovaud, the Swiss innovation agency. “Our country has excellent universities and engineers, and a long tradition of know-how. The people of Made in Switzerland associate high quality with reliability, and this also applies to aeronautical technology.
According to the Japanese Nobuo Okada, founder of Astroscale, it will be a question of preparing the satellites before their departure for their elimination at the end of their life. His company has developed a round plate with optical and magnetic properties, which is now installed at the customer’s premises. This allows Elsa-d to find and magnetically connect the client. This panel can be installed on any future satellite. Scrapers would help.
What a mess
Space is cool and empty, but near Earth is a landfill. More than half a million space debris revolves around the Earth. A small part of it has a natural origin: meteorites that orbit the sun like Earth and approach the planet. But most of it is human waste, ranging from small pieces to entire rocket pieces orbiting Earth.
This space debris is not only a disgrace, but also a great danger. The parts revolve around the Earth at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour. At these speeds, even the smallest particles of debris can cause a devastating collision with satellites orbiting the Earth or, for example, with a space station.
Space organizations ESA (Europe) and NASA (United States) estimate that such a collision, with the current amount of space debris, occurs once every ten years. That doesn’t sound like a lot, considering the amount of space junk, but it’s a lot of space.
Garbage cloud
Known collisions included in 1996 when a French satellite was damaged by the remains of a missile – also French – launched ten years earlier, and in 2009 when a retired Russian satellite collided with an American commercial satellite , which not only meant the end of the latter’s life, but a bonus on it, she added about two thousand pieces of debris to the garbage cloud.
Therefore, the risk of collision with existing space debris is really great. The chaos continues to grow as humanity brings more and more equipment into space. During the first decade of this century, an average of 72 satellites were put into orbit each year. There are now more than 125 a year, the ESA said, and that number will increase dramatically as new, advanced versions of the Internet are built.
Indeed, the International Space Station and the larger satellites must sometimes change course somewhat to avoid hitting debris. But not all space satellites have the engines to do this.
Space organizations have developed guidelines in consultation around the world to reduce leftover launches and get satellites that are no longer in orbit where they are not in their way. These guidelines are not enough. Some debris must be removed to reduce the risk. If more dangerous objects are chosen, the number to be recorded will be limited. The technology for this is currently under development. But these are very expensive missions.
Also read:
“However, it accelerated!”
Avi Loeb got all the knowledge by claiming that “Oumuamua, the object that passed through the solar system in 2017, was of such a strange origin. In his response, he describes his colleagues as myopic.
[ad_2]
Source link