Engineers Develop Space Harpoon That Could Tackle Satellite Debris Problem Stephen Harris - TheEngineer
go to original April 27, 2013

UK space firm Astrium has developed a new way to capture large items of space junk and pull them out of orbit using a harpoon and tether. (TheEngineerUK)

The team from satellite firm Astrium wanted to create a relatively simple and therefore reliable way to capture some of the larger pieces of junk from among the thousands currently in orbit, which pose a serious risk to functioning satellites.

A craft carrying a pneumatic launcher would fire a harpoon into its target and use a tether to drag it out of orbit and down into the atmosphere where it would burn up, in order to prevent it from colliding with other objects.

It makes sense to target bigger objects, said Jaime Reed, project leader and specialist mission systems engineer at Astrium, because they have a higher chance of causing collisions and any impacts would produce a large increase in the number of smaller fragments.

Read the rest at TheEngineer

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!