Clearing garbage on the universe

The head of a technology corporation in the United States said he could clean up the cosmic garbage in the earth's low orbit with a giant grid.

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Space said, Jerome Pearson - chairman of Star technology group in the United States, proposed an idea to clean up space garbage with the US Aerospace Agency (NASA). According to him, we should launch some spacecraft to put a giant net on the low orbit of the planet and collect garbage. Spacecraft self-produce electricity through sunlight and the earth's magnetic field, so their operating costs will be significantly reduced. They operate at altitudes below 2,000km, so they can only clean garbage in the low orbit of the globe.

Scientists believe that about 2,500 pieces of trash are bigger than a baseball (diameter of 10cm or more) floating in low orbit. Their total mass is about 2,000 tons.

If 12 spacecraft were launched on the same grid, every piece of waste larger than a low-ball baseball would disappear within 7 years, according to Pearson's calculations. Your company may start clearing garbage within the next 5 years, meaning that we may not see large pieces of trash on low orbit before 2023.

The cost of clearing garbage in 12 years is about 84 million USD. Because cosmic garbage is a global problem, Pearson thinks countries should share this cost.

Pearson's idea was announced after the US National Academy of Sciences warned that the amount of cosmic garbage around the earth had reached a dangerous level and they could destroy artificial satellites and spacecraft at any time.

Cosmic trash is an inactive spacecraft, old artificial satellites, used missiles or debris from artificial satellite collisions. They fly around the earth at speeds of up to 28,163 km / h. At that rate, a tiny piece of trash could also damage the spacecraft.

About 22,000 large pieces of trash are floating near low orbit, not to mention the numerous small pieces of equipment that the devices cannot follow. The amount of cosmic trash continues to increase because of the collision between them creating smaller pieces.

NASA and many other organizations try to track cosmic garbage to ensure astronaut safety and property in the universe, but the problem is becoming so serious that experts call for active intervention. from governments.

'Small-scale garbage removal activities outside the Earth cannot make big changes. We need to clean up low-scale garbage on a large scale to drastically reduce the risk to astronauts and space assets , 'Pearson said.