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Beware of the stars. There is a new weapon for the interstellar inhabitants that you are threatening with your gigaflipper that crushes the planet, and is being tested right now. This small-scale version may only be useful for eliminating dangerous orbital debris, but over time it will pierce your hypercarbon skin and your heart beyond repair.
Literally a space harpoon. (Credit: Airbus)
However, it would be irresponsible of me to speculate beyond what is possible today with the technology, so leave a summary of the harpoon's current capabilities to suffice.
The space harpoon is part of the project RemoveDEBRIS, a multi-organization European effort to create and test space debris mitigation methods. There are thousands of little pieces of people who know what's clogging our orbital neighborhood, from microscopic to potentially catastrophic in size.
There are as many ways to remove these rogue objects as there are sizes and shapes of spatial junk; it may be enough to use a laser to reduce a small piece to orbital decomposition, but larger objects require more practical solutions. And apparently of nautical origin: RemoveDEBRIS has a net, a sail and a harpoon. No cannon?
You can see how the three elements are supposed to work here:
The harpoon is intended for larger targets, such as large satellites that have malfunctioned and are moving away from their orbits. A single ground conductor could knock them down to Earth, but capturing them and controlling the descent is a more controlled technique.
While an ordinary harpoon would simply be thrown by the likes of Queequeg or Dagoo, in space, it's a little different. Unfortunately, it is not practical to adapt a harpooner to EVA missions. So everything has to be automated. Fortunately, the organization is also testing computer vision systems that can identify and track targets. From there, you just have to shoot with the harpoon and wind it up, which the satellite has demonstrated today.
This small object designed by Airbus looks a lot like a rocking harpoon, whose piece comes off once it pierces the target. Obviously, it is a single-use device, but it is not particularly large and many could be deployed simultaneously on different interception orbits. Once rolled up, a drag and drop (visible in the video above) could be deployed to speed up the re-entry. Everything could be done with little or no thruster, which greatly simplifies the operation.
Obviously, this is not yet a threat to starwhales. But we will get there. We will have these good monsters one day.
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