Humans clearly have a trash problem on Earth, but our track record isn’t that much better in outer space, where tens of thousands of stray debris fragments whip around the planet at rip-roaring speeds, posing a very serious danger to astronauts and satellites.
Many ideas have been tossed out to deal with our orbital trash, including space-grade fishing nets and laser-telescopes. The latest so-crazy-it-might-just-work scheme? An autonomous space trash bot that sucks up junk and vaporizes it for propulsion.
It’s still very theoretical, but the concept, which appearedin a recent paper on arXiv, is pretty intriguing in that the trash bot would require no external source of propulsion. In its current design, the engine would catch small pieces of debris (<4 inches) that aren’t easy to get a fix on with laser but still pose big danger orbital infrastructure. (According to the ESA, even a <1-inch nugget of junk could pack the punch a hand grenade.) trash would then be fed to ball mill, coffee grinder-esque contraption that uses abrasion-resistant pellets pulverize everything into fine powder. conceptual model space engine, via lan et al. 2015 powder is charging system, which heats it roiling mess plasma. from plasma, positively charged ions are separated and accelerated high energies generate thrust. each time bot swallows some food, gets little kick, propelling onward toward its next meal. course, there still big issues work out: for one, while craft wouldn’t need propellant, vacuum-cleaner-coffee-grinder trash-to-energy system requires power source. what’s more, thrust spacecraft produces depends on density debris, you might imagine situation where bot, having cleared surrounding area, suddenly finds itself marooned. personally, i’m hoping see combination these ideas make past concept phase in few years. orbital problem only getting worse, an environmental cleanup effort involving giant lasers, fishing, autonomous vacuum cleaners something i think we’d all like see. [read full paper at arXiv h/t MIT Tech Review]
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Top image: Artist’s impression of debris swirling around the earth, via ESA–P. Carril
