4 ms·

Somewhat inspired by the Japanese robots bouncing around on the Hayabusa2 mission ... I think it'd be nice to be able to 'push off' against the debris satellite

Somewhat inspired by the Japanese robots bouncing around on the Hayabusa2 mission ... I think it'd be nice to be able to 'push off' against the debris satellite, to both decelerate it whilst also gaining orbital velocity for the clean-up satellite to go hunt down another target.

dnautics 8y ago
Much of the debris is not even that large.
simonh 8y ago
If you push off against it to gain velocity, you'll fly away from it very quickly and not spend long enough pushing it to meaningfully change it's orbit.
- xelxebar 8y ago
  It might be concievable to bounce lased light back and forth for a while and transfer momentum that way.