Dealing With Space Junk
Dealing with space debris is an increasingly important aspect of spaceflight. Can we take it under control? What technical challenges will we need to overcome? What will it mean for the future of space infrastructure? Answering all these questions with Alex Godfrey from Astroscale.
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XD9Njacdqk8
Comments (3)
I wonder if the space debris will increase exponentially at some point? Tragedy of the commons, yep. What paradigm would accelerate more forward thinking so we're not always playing catch up?
Just joined but our family has been watching your channel for a good while. I had some queries on concept to share on space debris retrieval. For the smaller debris could we have ballistic gel plates positioned so they catch the smaller stuff?
The Stardust mission launched in 1999 carried an aerogel-based collector that caught particles from the coma of a comet and returned them to Earth for investigation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_(spacecraft)#Sample_collection). I can picture a "sweeper" that uses large sheets of aerogel to capture small (< 1mm) bits of space junk.