Tiny Cube Drags Space Debris From Orbit 77
krou writes "A team from Surrey Space Centre has developed a device called a CubeSail, designed to be attached to satellites and rocket stages in order to drag space debris from orbit. CubeSail is a nanosatellite, weighing 3kg (6.6lb), and measures 10cm x 10cm x 30cm. Within its frame is a polymer sheet that unfurls itself once in space. 'The simple deployment mechanism features four metal strips that are wound under tension and will snap into a straight line when let go, pulling the sheet flat in the process.' The overall idea is that 'Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull the object out of the sky much faster than is normal.' Sir Martin Sweeting, the chairman of SSTL, who supported the research, said, 'We would be looking to put it on our own satellites and to put it on other people's spacecraft as well. We want this to be a standard, essential bolt-on item for a spacecraft; and that's why it's very important to make it small, because if it's too big it will interfere with the rest of the spacecraft.' The team is also hoping that CubeSail can act as a propulsion system, using 'solar sailing' to help satellites keep their orbits more efficiently."
Re:Is 25 sq m big enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. 25 m^2 is a good bit of surface area. It's not going to stop these things in an instant, but it would certainly make their orbits decay much sooner.
Re:now to... (Score:1, Insightful)
As homework, name the military applications presented by cheap autonomous self-attaching de-orbiters.
Re:Is this really a net gain? (Score:1, Insightful)
The lifetime collision risk depends not only on the volume of space it sweeps out, it also depends on the amount of junk in its orbit.
Taking down satellites faster will reduce the amount of junk for active satellites. It won't do anything for the satellite it is attached to directly - but it will help reduce the collision risk for other satellites. Which, for companies like EADS or SSTL means they can keep launching satellites.
Re:Should be required (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I gather, so is significantly changing an orbit and you'd have to do that twice, one to get it to the recycling point and once more to get it to whereever you want to go. Also in lower orbits you need thrusters to stay up or your orbit will decay, which means you can't just dump them somewhere because there's a constant fuel cost. From what I gather this is for when they're out of thrusters and the orbit is decaying, to speed up the deorbit. Without doing more it'd come down anyway, just not so quickly so there'd be much more space junk up there.