Space Junk-Zapping Lasers: Yep That’s A Thing

Apparently, the admonition on signs across England reading “No tipping rubbish” should have been placed in outer space as well.

Now, some say that there are as many as 300,000 pieces of trash littering the Earth’s orbit especially the lower orbit. Many of the items are small such as individual screws and nuts, but may also include larger objects such as parts of rockets which have been ejected. Some believe that the problem will eventually become severe and may damage satellites leading to impaired communications.

Now, NASA has announced a new partnership with Australia to launch a joint endeavor called the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) which will initially track the debris in outer space using telescopes and lasers.

Eventually, the plan is to improve the strength of the lasers to allow them to destroy the debris and start a process of clearing up the lower orbit making it safer for satellites and space stations.

The project is being funded with $60 million of which 33% comes from NASA ($20 million) and the remaining 67% ($40 million) is from private sources. A spokesman for the projected added that the method of locating debris is exact and no functioning object such as a satellite will be inadvertently targeted and destroyed.

The project is expected to be working in the next 10 years, Matthew Colless, director of Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, told Reuters.

“It’s important that it’s possible on that scale because there’s so much space junk up there,” he said. “We’re perhaps only a couple of decades away from a catastrophic cascade of collisions … that takes out all the satellites in low orbit.”

Source material:
Space junk-zapping lasers under development
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/space-junk-zapping-lasers-under-development-1.2566600