[SpaceProgram] We’ve Already Passed the Tipping Point for Orbital Debris - IEEE Spectrum

[Matt Johnson]

The BBC has a report of another idea for capturing space debris. It is
to harpoon old satellites and drag them down:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19803461. This seems
like an idea that might be testable on a small scale. Perhaps it is
relevant to SpaceGAMBIT.

--
Matt Johnson



On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Matt Johnson <railmeat at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the typical human behavior has been to move on to a new area
> once one becomes polluted. I am not sure how that would work in near
> earth orbit.
>
> Here is an article from 2/12 about a Swiss university effort to use a
> picosatellite to remove an older picosatellite:
> http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2032/1 This is an 11 million
> dollar effort so a bit too expensive for SpaceGAMBIT, but it is an
> interesting and useful idea and a lot cheaper then most things in
> space.
>
> --
> Matt Johnson
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 3:23 AM, Jerry Isdale <isdale at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/satellites/weve-already-passed-the-tipping-point-for-orbital-debris
>>
>> Interesting article from IEEE - although we are not seeing the major fallout
>> from this overpopulation yet, the effects will rise as time goes on.
>> Perhaps some of our (SpaceGAMBIT) relatively near term effort could be on
>> addressing this problem.  We need to clean up our local area before we go
>> off trashing the rest of the solar system, and galaxy!
>>
>> Jerry Isdale
>> isdale at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
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