Space Junk-Fighting Cable Fails To Deploy (newscientist.com) 55
New Scientist reports:
It's a rubbish start for the world's first space clean-up experiment. A cable designed to drag space junk out of orbit has failed to deploy from a Japanese spacecraft... A 700-metre-long metal cable was fitted to an unmanned spacecraft called Kounotori 6, which was on its way back to Earth after delivering supplies to the International Space Station. The cable was meant to unfurl from the spacecraft, at which point an electric current would pass along its length. The idea was that the current would interact with the Earth's magnetic field, creating a drag that pulled the spacecraft out of orbit. The spacecraft would then tumble into our atmosphere and become incinerated... However, Kounotori 6 was unable to release the cable to test its junk-removing potential, and JAXA could not fix the glitch before the spacecraft returned to Earth's atmosphere this morning... "Releasing a cable may seem simple, but nothing in space is simple," says Sean Tuttle at the University of New South Wales in Australia... The test's failure should be seen as a setback rather than a nail in the coffin for junk-removing cables, Tuttle says.
rickyslashdot writes: Because of the simplicity of this system, it is bound to be tested again -- hopefully sooner than later... This process is inherently safer than using rocket engines (to be attached to the junk), and is much less of a 'mass-to-orbit' cost, since it only requires a grappling system, and a spool of wire/cable. Hopefully, there will be a follow-up / re-try in the near future for this orbital debris clean-up process.
rickyslashdot writes: Because of the simplicity of this system, it is bound to be tested again -- hopefully sooner than later... This process is inherently safer than using rocket engines (to be attached to the junk), and is much less of a 'mass-to-orbit' cost, since it only requires a grappling system, and a spool of wire/cable. Hopefully, there will be a follow-up / re-try in the near future for this orbital debris clean-up process.
Re:Why do people not understand (Score:5, Funny)
Being Slashdot, we could use parentheses instead:
((space junk) fighting) cable = "a cable that fights space-junk"
(space junk) (fighting cable) = "a fighting-cable that is space-junk"
(space (junk fighting)) cable = "a space-ready cable intended for fighting junk"
space (junk (fighting cable)) = "a broken fighting-cable found in space
space ((junk fighting) cable) = "a TV cable channel showing junk-fighting tournaments that is broadcast to space"
I had to struggle with some of those...
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Thanks, I think your use of parentheses makes it very clear what's wrong. The headline is conveying example #3, when it was trying to go for example #1.
Smug Lisp weenie (Score:2)
Hey, dude; we're wise to your kind!
Junk ( (space junk) fighting cable) (Score:2)
In this case, it's a junk junk-fighting cable.
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Being Slashdot, "Japanese space tentacle" would be clear for everyone.
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I was about to get me knickers all bunched up over this, and similar issues, until I read a former editor (the great Rob Malda himself) state what pretty much summed up the utter lack of editorship in Slashdot. It's in the FAQ linked down there at the bottom; I find it relatable to suspension of disbelief. At the moment though, we're the junk fighters, holding out our hand to try and stop the assault, with the hyphens and dashes suspended in mid-air
Re: Why do people not understand (Score:1)
Actually, if "space junk" is understood to be a single term without hyphenation (as you argued), then the single hyphen is at least acceptable. Technically, it would probably be best to say "space-junk-fighting cable" to be completely clear since all three words are necessary for the concept. However, "space junk fighting cable" is the most incorrect of all these options, as "fighting," "space," and "junk" each are nonsensical as independent adjectives applied to "cable" without all of the others also prese
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Won't work. My bedroom has lots of spider webs and its still full of junk.
Re: i cry bullshit (Score:2)
People seem to think that somehow redesigning these processes and equipment for near-vacuum microgravity will be no issue. I strongly suspect these people have no idea what they're talking about or have read far too much of Kim Stanley Robinson's work and assume that it's hard-scifi.
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Anyone who thinks it's easy to do complicated things in space isn't really worth the effort to argue with. As it turns out, just about *everything* done in space has a huge host of unique challenges and hurdles to overcome. I'm pretty confident that we'll eventually be smelting in space, as that's the logical way to bootstrap massive in-space construction projects, but I'd imagine we're basically going to have to completely re-invent the technology for automation and zero-G environments.
I've found that wh
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Indeed. I just had a discussion with someone who seemed to think that a steampunk hydraulic robot is something that can be put together in an afternoon instead of a project of years with a string of inventions over those years to get it to the point where electronic robots are.
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Right
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Right now we have to overcome a disadvantage in the form of atmospheric contamination when making steel on Earth, but we gain an advantage in using gravity to manipulate materials to transport from one part of the steel mill to another and to create final products. Or do you just propose to manufacture roughly spherical blobs of metal and leave it at that?
I think one hope is that we'll learn how to build foam steel, which can in theory be made in space — indeed, it may only be possible to make it there. Even if all we could do was make big extrusions out of it, it would be exceptionally useful for building stuff in space.
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Some of the asteroids have metal in an unoxidized state so that makes the mineral processing a bit easier, or at least removes a step.
I've mentioned this here before, but some (maybe rare but at least one has been found) are in a state where all you have to do is forge the thing you want out of a bit of metallic asteroid. The "sky iron" in fantasy stories is based on things like Tutenkamen's dagger which was forged from part of a meteorit
Summary (Score:2)
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No, the cable never was release and the ship returned back to the earths atmosphere. Next time someone needs to just put on a space suit and walk out there to "unfurl" it.
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No, not more space junk.
The experiment was deployed on a capsule full of sewage and trash, and is going to be incinerated on re-entry.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Well, at lest you're not an AC.
Unclear Summary (Score:1)
Every summary of this story I have seen completely misunderstands what this technology is for.
This is NOT intended to deal with the problem of existing space junk. This is a cheap/light widget you can add to FUTURE satellites which will allow them to de-orbit in a timely fashion, thus reducing future space junk.
It should also be noted that the Kounotori 6 spacecraft was already on a decaying orbit when the cable was meant to deploy, so no additional space junk was created by the failure.
There is something beguiling about space tethers. (Score:2)
That's the only conclusion I can draw by the way space designers keep turning to them no matter how often they bollux things up. Tethers must be the astronautical equivalent of an abusive boyfriend.