Two 10-year-old prodigies want to build a space garbage cleaner

Two 10-year-old boys living in New York, USA, were awarded a $ 10,000 prize with the idea of ​​reusing the Hubble space telescope into the collection of cosmic trash.

Oliver Blaise and Leonard Gu, two 10-year-old students of Locust Valley Middle School, New York, USA, have won the first prize of the Explora Vision category for 4th to 6th graders with a reward of $ 10,000, according to Business Insider. .

"I want to be a scientist," Gu said, holding up a lego space shuttle that he and Blaise assembled.

This model spaceship is the product of two children designed to participate in the Explora Vision competition, a project sponsored by Toshiba Corporation and organized by the National Science Teachers Association. This is the world's largest science competition for students from grades 1 to 12, motivating them to imagine future technologies.

The invention is called Hubble NEST with the aim of cleaning up the space junk that is spinning around our own planet.

"We both like things about space and care about extra-terrestrial waste. It's a serious problem that mankind has not found a solution , " said the 10-year-old prodigy.

Oliver Blaise and Leonard Gu.(Photo: Business Insider).

Space junk are pieces of spacecraft, satellites, rocket propulsion parts, debris produced by erosion, disintegration and impact. NASA is monitoring 500,000 debris the size of just one marble to larger. They revolve around the Earth at speeds of up to 28,000 km / h.

According to NASA, more than 20,000 pieces of trash are larger than an existing tennis ball and millions of visitors are too small to make them difficult to detect. Because their movement speed is fast, even a single red dot spilling through space can damage satellites or spacecraft.

At first, Blaise and Gu came up with the idea of ​​using a spider-like web and carbon nanotubes stretching between two towers to collect garbage.

"However, there is no guarantee that the mesh will be released. Moreover, it can damage the tower," Gu said.

After that, the boys thought about using lasers to break up the pieces of trash, but as soon as the idea came up, they noticed many problems.

"We know lasers can destroy everything, but they will only make a large piece of trash break into more pieces," Gu explained.

Finally, two young creators decided to build the Hubble NEST.

"At that time, we learned that NASA was about to stop the Hubble Space Telescope in about two years. We were fascinated with Hubble, loved the space and didn't want this machine to stop working. Instead of giving a new spacecraft into space, let's recycle Hubble and reuse it, which will save considerable money , " said the 10-year-old boys.

According to these scientific prodigies, the implementation of Hubble function transformation is very simple. This space telescope will operate with a spaceship, helping to detect and eliminate garbage. However, a major drawback of this plan is that Hubble has no propulsion parts, so it cannot move on its own.

Therefore, Blaise and Gu put up the idea of ​​equipping this glasses with a group of flying robots called "unmanned sparrows".

Robots are controlled by people on Earth and recognize the location of space junk through the Hubble glasses. After that, the robot will fly to collect garbage with "bird beak", "claw" or suction.

The Explora Vision competition helps children develop ideas about science.(Photo: Classbrain.com).

If it is a valuable piece of trash, "unmanned sparrows" will take them to Earth, otherwise they will be burnt to ashes in the atmosphere.

Blaise and Gu said, while the design of the spacecraft is quite easy, the new research is really difficult because there are currently no projects relating to the space waste problem.

"Absolutely nothing, everything is just a bunch of ideas , " Gu said.

Neither Blaise nor Gu are sure what they will do when they grow up. They can do it scientifically and Explora Vision will help these children on the right track.

"The competition helps me understand more about space, things that I never learn without participating," Blaise said excitedly.