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Orbital Space Debris Caught for the First Time
- CapitalistCartr 8y agoIf you're intersted in the orbital debris problem, I reccomend Nasa's site: https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov
- stevekmcc 8y agoWe're a messy species: oceans, atmosphere and space. But we do have a conscience, and we are creative, so maybe there's hope.
- jniedrauer 8y agoThis has little to do with anyone's conscience, and more to do with our fear of Kessler syndrome.
- stevekmcc 8y agoYou're right, sadly: I guess I was anthropomorphizing us ;)
- sandworm101 8y agoNo. >>> The mission involves deploying these cubesats as artificial space junk and them capturing them to demonstrate the effectiveness debris removal technology. It picked up trash that it released. It did not intercept trash. It grabbed a conveniently placed and engineered object with virtually identical orbital parameters.
- jniedrauer 8y agoHow is this different than capturing real trash, minus some extra Δv to match orbits?
- sandworm101 8y ago(1) Finding the trash, targeting it with sensors. (2) Irregular shape/rotation of trash. (3) Trash with sharp edges.
- sparrish 8y agoTitle is a bit misleading. The company sent up the cubesat "debris" along with their net for testing purposes. I guess that does make it space debris. If their net had failed, it would have been yet another piece of junk orbiting - but the the net effect was zero cleanup. It was a successful test.
- jniedrauer 8y agoAnime is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
- sctb 8y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18031714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18031714.