An Integrated Design for Collecting and Recycling of Space Debris

TARGET GROUP: SPACE DEBRIS IN EARTH ORBIT

OBJECTIVES

·        To collect various sizes of space debris with an integrated design for a space craft and can be recycled for use as a source of raw material in construction equipment, maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS), or satisfying other needs of future space missions.

SUMMARY

Each satellite in Earth orbit has an average lifetime around 5 years. In addition, many satellites have been converted to small debris with various sizes. Such orbital debris is called space waste. It is also defined as: “human-made objects in space that are no longer functioning because of decays, deorbits, explosions, or collisions of satellites, and thus, create more debris. This debris remains in orbit and rotates above the Earth’s atmosphere. It survives for many years and might cause problems in the future, if the space community does not take any actions to deal with the potential risk. The amount of the orbital debris has increased exponentially in the last few decades due to increase and accumulation of parts of satellites that were launched from many parts of the globe as well as unintentional or accidental spacecraft explosions and collisions. Collisions of larger debris create numerous fragments in the 1-kilogram mass range (David 2004). Orbital debris could destroy any satellite. Over 500,000 of pieces range from 10 cm to 1 cm size; being large enough to cause permanent damage. Moreover, more than 100 million particles range from 1 cm to 1 mm in size that could puncture a spacesuit or cause damage to fuel tanks and windows of space station and spacecraft. The hundreds of millions of space debris in Earth orbit were generated from the space activities of only a few countries. This includes more than 300,000 pieces of space debris large enough to completely destroy operating satellites upon impact (Wright 2007; Johnson 2009). Thus, it is clear that Earth-orbital debris amplifies the risk of catastrophic collisions to spacecraft and a great danger to the crews. Moreover, the increasing volume of orbital debris threaten the important space-based applications, which are used in our daily life, such as weather forecasting, telecommunications, and global positioning systems (GPS) that are depend on orbiting satellites in a stable space environment (Paul K. Martin 2021).

REFERENCE

https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-647907/v1/2e53418f-d7dd-43ff-86d4-0aee4beb2f64.pdf?c=1631885776