Arksien comments on Simulation of space debris orbiting Earth. In Space, Even A Single Grain Can Lead To Catastrophe. Want to snag a satellite? Try a net / Clean Space / Space Engineering & Technology. Want to snag a satellite? Try a net Netting a derelict satellite 23 March 2015 One of humanity’s oldest technologies, the humble fishing net, may yet find a new role in space: bringing down dead satellites.
The behaviour of nets in orbit was recently checked on an aircraft flying parabolic arcs to create brief periods of weightlessness. “We shot nets out of a compressed air ejector at a scale-model satellite,” explains ESA engineer Kjetil Wormnes. Weightless net testing for derelict satellite capture “We fired 20 nets at various speeds during 21 parabolas over two days. “The good news is they worked extremely well – so much so that the nets usually had to be cut away with a knife before we could shoot again.”
Team boarding aircraft The Falcon 20 aircraft is flown so that for 20 seconds at a time it falls through the sky, effectively cancelling out gravity inside the aircraft. “Everything was recorded on four high-speed HD cameras,” Kjetil added. Canada's Falcon 20 parabolic aircraft. Japan's huge magnetic net will trawl for space junk - space - 22 January 2014. Gravity wasn't all fiction: tiny pieces of high-speed orbiting debris endanger our satellites. Now Japan is set to launch an electromagnetic net to catch them SOMEWHERE in Earth's orbit, a satellite explodes into a terrifying cloud of debris.
Moments later, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are left scrambling to dodge the deadly space junk. This problem isn't confined to the Oscar-nominated space thriller Gravity – scientists are struggling with it in real life. Next month, the Japanese space agency, JAXA, will pilot its "electrodynamic tether" for the first time. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of spacecraft, satellites and other equipment from human spaceflight zip around our planet, some travelling faster than the speed of sound. To build its debris-catching net, JAXA brought in Nitto Seimo, a company that specialises in fishing equipment. JAXA thinks the net's main advantage is its simplicity – it's lightweight and doesn't require any propellant to move. More From New Scientist. Phoenix. WebGL Globe.
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