Bits of Sputnik

It's Official. Earth's inner orbit is a bit of a junkyard.

It is all man made debris that found its way up there from the very early days of the Space Race when, yes, bits of Sputnik and Apollo's just fell off and started their slow path downwards into the fiery furnace of the atmosphere.

There are currently, according to a monitoring organisation, 2271 satellites in orbit around our planet adding to those that have failed, been decommissioned or have just fulfilled their original roles in communication, experimental and military sectors.

All of these objects, and I include amongst them the ISS, hurtle around at 17500 mph in a carefully controlled flight plan so as to avoid collision and conflict.

What continues as a matter for concern, however, are those random bits of space debris which are out of control.

Some 170 million bits and bobs are smaller than 1cm in size, a further 670,000 up to 10cm and there are 29,000 items of undetermined but larger size all just drifting about.

Even the tiniest fragment of metal or other space-proofed material could do untold damage to a manned or unmanned spacecraft if coming into contact. As far back as the 1970's a NASA scientist predicted that unless around 100 objects were removed, at the rate of 5 per year, from inner earth orbit there could be a devastating effect on satellites and spacecraft, in effect making the zone a no-fly area.

This has been a developing problem and just this month a prototype housekeeping or rather "spacekeeping" system was trialled for the purposes of capturing and removing or, in a controlled manner, destroying the waste in orbit.

It may be a sophisticated piece of equipment in terms of technology and in the science and physics of its deployment but at its core it is perhaps the simplest of concepts. We are not talking about space blasting lasers, ultrasound waves or targeted missiles but a very large woven net.

The initiative is part of a programme by the European RemoveDebris Mission, one of a few ideas with the ultimate aim of giving the atmosphere a bit of a spring clean.

In terms of scale this first attempt was quite modest.

The satellite able to fire the net is about as big as a domestic fridge. It also has a harpoon, a drag sail and a visual tracking device.

In this test, the first of its type, the target was a small cubesat of dimensions 10cm x 10cm x 20cm and in a two to three minute sequence from close range the object was successfully captured.

The reason that a tame target had to be used is interesting in that according to International law the ownership of the actual space junk items lies with the country of origin and so, an attempt to deploy the system on actual orbiting junk would, technically, constitute theft. The lawyers will have to look at that issue in some detail in due course.

The net, a simplistic concept did take some 6 years on terrestrial trials to be at a stage to be confidently released in an actual "live" operation but results have been encouraging. .

The RemoveDebris Mission is awaiting the analysis of the data from the trial but are confident that it could be used in a determined effort to cleanse that part of the atmosphere that is most useful to just about all of our daily needs for tech, communication and security.

Some may argue that a similarly funded and determined clean-up operation in the Earth's Oceans should take priority over near space but there may be important findings and spin-off inventions that could be of ultimate benefit back on planet Earth.