Clear up garbage on the vast universe

Emptying garbage on Earth is already tiring enough, is there a need to pay attention to the garbage in the vast universe?

'The more people make missions into space, the more waste they leave there' - Aswin Sekhar, astrophysicist currently working at the Earth's Dynamics Research Center at the University of Oslo (Norway), said.

The term refers to objects put into space by humans and in orbit of the Earth such as old satellites, lower rockets, or fragments from these devices.

Economist on January 4 leads the latest data from the European Space Agency (ESA), saying that there are about 7,500 tons of all kinds of space waste, from 'full -time ' satellites , fragments, screws or paint of the equipment . in Earth's orbit.

These numbers will continue to increase as by August 2017, the US Space Monitoring Network has identified 18,747 objects (not garbage) brought into space by humans, of which 1,738 satellites (telecommunications, television, weather) are still active, according to NASA.

RemoveDEBRIS (right) launches the catch net to play the garbage block (left).

All of these objects are 'sources' of cosmic waste if they fail or complete a mission without returning to Earth.

Don't worry about falling to the head, but .

Can cosmic garbage become their ears "from heaven" literally to people on Earth? 'You'd be surprised how often the garbage in the sky fell into the sky' - Popular Science snatched the 'scary' headline in late November last year.

Accordingly, every year an average of 200-400 objects fall from the orbit of the globe, but most will be burned when exposed to the atmosphere by moving at extremely high speeds.

According to Popular Science, even if the pieces of cosmic debris fall and are burned in the Earth's atmosphere 'once every three days' , the probability that someone will get hit by cosmic garbage is extremely small ( 1 / 1,000 billion, compared with 1 part 1.4 million probability of being struck by lightning).

If not burned in the process of falling, the objects 'from the sky fell there' also 'landed' into the sea or uninhabited areas, according to Quartz.

The problem of not being falling ' objects from the sky' will harm people but they can influence humanity's next space missions.

If large pieces of debris or corpses can be easily observed and monitored, then smaller pieces of space waste are the nightmare of space travel.

According to ESA, in millions of pieces of trash in space, there are only 750,000 objects larger than 1cm, and about 166 million pieces larger than 1mm.

With the velocity of movement in orbit up to 28,000km / h, a paint peeled off from the satellite shell is enough to cause disaster if it hits the ISS space station or the satellites are active for the sake of 'destruction' ' very big.

An even more terrible prospect for aerospace industry is the phenomenon of debris colliding in the space: debris generated from the first collision will continue to collide with each other, and so on to endless. This phenomenon is called the Kessler effect .

Thousands of satellites will be launched into space in the next 10 years and scientists fear the space near Earth will become more dangerous for satellites, especially large and expensive devices. This worry is not excessive when there are more than 290 collisions, breaks and explosions in space, according to the Economist.

Illustrate how to 'break javelin' according to RemoveDEBRIS's theory (red arrow shows after being hit by the target will rush).

From shattering to 'netting', 'skewers' .

Since mid-January, the international media has reported heavily on a plan to use lasers to shoot cosmic debris by Chinese Air Force Technical University researchers.

In the article published in the International Journal for Light and Electron Optics, the team published a model of simulations and suggested that lasers are an effective tool to shoot objects in the universe to turn them into pieces. Small and less harmful.

The scientists argue that because the distance from the ground to the atmosphere is too large, it is not feasible to place the 'laser firing station' on Earth by introducing it to space in the form of a small spacecraft.

Gizmodo technology page on January 16 said the idea of ​​the research team from the mainland is not really new.

In 2015 Australian researcher Manuel Schmitz and colleagues published a similar idea in Acta Astronautica and clearly explained that the laser does not destroy the pieces of cosmic trash as described in the press today, but it just 'transfer energy into large pieces of trash so that they will fall from orbit and be burned in the atmosphere, or off the spacecraft's flight path (to avoid collisions)'.

In February, RemoveDEBRIS, a satellite the size of a washing machine built by Surrey Satellite Technology (UK), will accompany a refueling flight for the ISS space station to conduct four experiments involving 'cosmic cleaning'.

According to the Space Center of Surrey University (UK) - the unit conducting the experiment, RemoveDEBRIS will bring two cube-shaped sub-satellite (10cm each) called CubeSat, which acts as a garbage block in two tests. daring garbage disposal: throw the net over or throw 'javelin' (literally) into the object, then take it back, like fishing with a net or slanting with TB.

In the third experiment, RemoveDEBRIS will use camera and lidar (laser remote sensing device) to take CubeSat images and its 3D mapping.

If successful, this experiment will pave the way for waste identification technology and take corresponding measures. Finally, test a part like a parachute to "pull" the satellite back into the atmosphere.

In 2016 China also sent a test satellite called Aolong-1 into space to collect garbage with a robotic arm, while private satellite company Astroscale (Singapore) is also designing satellites capable of detecting dance trash. pillars and using magnets for 'garbage collection', is expected to run at the end of 2019.

In parallel with cleaning, enhancing the ability to detect and monitor objects in the universe is equally important.

The US Aerospace Command is expected to soon activate Space Fence radar (Space Fence), able to monitor and classify 200,000 objects with dimensions of just 10cm in space.

New jobs in the future

Admittedly, the above solutions are only ideas and are not known to be feasible. China's 'laser-firing' project is just a publication of the theory and together with Aolong-1, both are suspected of serving military purposes rather than 'because the universe is clean and beautiful'.

The more radical plan is to make the spacecraft and satellites return to Earth without leaving too much garbage in space. According to the Economist, there are already standards to limit the accumulation of waste in the universe.

For example, the suspension satellite needs to be destroyed within 25 years, either by pulling back to Earth or pushing somewhere instead of selecting Earth orbit as a 'resting place'.

But like many other rules, these regulations are not always followed and the evidence is that many pieces of garbage have been stored for a long time in space.

The interesting thing is that clearing up garbage can be commercialized and soon become a new career in the future, according to Guglielmo Aglietti - director of the Surrey Space Center Space Center.

'This will happen if governments come together to pay for (someone) to keep the universe clean, so as not to harm the aerospace activities of those states or their citizens. they " - Aglietti told the Economist.