The Electrodynamic Debris Eliminator (EDDE) would be a spacecraft with 200 nets attached to it, allowing it to gather up any errant satellites. It could then either send them into the South Pacific, angle them to burn up on re-entry or even recycle the materials right there in space for use in constructing future space stations or satellites.
Pretty crazy stuff. But they already have a text flight planned for 2013, and if that goes well, there could be a whole fleet of these things cleaning up space by 2017. [TechWorld via PopSci]
Jubal1
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 10:56 AMThey should recover as much of the debris as possible and sell it as ‘Space Souvenirs’
Hands up if you’d pay good coin for a piece of Space Junk, tastefully mounted, with a ceritficate of authenticity.
*Scurries off to call DARPA*
Daniel
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 10:57 AMThis is the best idea _ever_! Why didn’t someone think of this before??? Let’s just capture all the junk we’ve put in space, and then bring it down into our oceans. Excellent thinking.
Ripley McStoner
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 11:16 AMThere should be a default switch on all new satelites, that they burn up in earths atmosphere once they are no longer useful
DoctorOwl
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 12:34 PMI think they generally allow for this now. The thing is debris isn’t from that. It’s from launching and normal operation.
Mike
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 8:52 PMMost of the countries who are able to launch satellites have signed an international agreement that stipulates that any satellite will have enough reserve fuel to send it into an orbit about 1/3 of the way between Earth and the moon. Many Russian satellites have nuclear fuel or other harmful chemicals that you do not want to have splash down into the Pacific Ocean. My guess is that what they “catch” in the net will be old rocket engines and some dead commercial satellites. No spy satellies, or other countries’ stuff.
Bunghole
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 11:24 AMYeh what Daniel said abot the oceans thats so stupid! poor earth! FEED IT TO THE WHALES INSTEAD! MUAHAHAHAHA
Adam
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 12:17 PM“But they already have a text flight planned for 2013″
I’d have thought they would be better off with more than just text..