I did some quick Googling and could not figure out what the plan is for doing this economically. There are thousands of pieces of debris scattered over thousands of orbits, and the fuel cost of transfers to many orbits are prohibitive. That's why most of the debris-cleanup ideas I was familiar with involved lasers or other techniques that don't require the cleanup satellite to match orbits with the debris. So what's the strategy here? Just clean up a few of the most highly trafficked orbits? Anyone got a link?
This page obtained the image from a tweet (Or an x?) from the company, Astroscale, that instead had a link to a page [1] that explains:
> The ADRAS-J spacecraft was selected by JAXA for Phase I of its Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration (CRD2) program. Astroscale Japan is responsible for the design, manufacture, test, launch and operations of ADRAS-J.
I read that link previously but it doesn’t really answer my question (other than pointing out that the cost of developing tech for proximity operations can be split with in-orbit servicing companies).
I couldn't get a clear sense either. But their website's focus on "orbit servicing" and EOL gives me the impression that this is really for proactively managing space debris from recent missions, not cleaning up historic debris. Their method makes more sense for cleaning dense "packets" of debris whose orbits haven't yet significantly deviated from the original mission orbit, so the cleanup satellite doesn't have to make too many maneuvers.
It still doesn't seem economical or even all that feasible.
Yea another possibility is that this almost completely about in-orbit servicing, and the debris-cleanup angle is like marketing fluff. (“Maybe one day this will be cleaning our precious space environment! You never know!”)
There’s four things that make this more useful than it might first appear. First Ion engines can pack a lot of DeltaV when you essentially have zero payload beyond an attachment device.
Next most unguided mass is still in a small number of giant objects so we don’t need to clean everything just removing the biggest objects in the most crowded orbits prevents things from getting worse.
You don’t need to get junk into a low orbit. A highly elliptical one that just touches earth’s atmosphere will deorbit things eventually. Which then sets up for the next intercept as DeltaV as perigee magnifies where your perigee ends up. Further the goal is to intercept at a reasonably low relative velocity you don’t actually need to match each of those orbits. (You can also use earth’s atmosphere to lower your perigee essentially for free so aim for the highest orbit first and work down the list.)
Finally you don’t need to handle everything with a single device. Even just having one in a polar orbit and one in an equatorial orbit greatly reduces deltaV requirements.
* DeltaV at perigee magnifies where your apogee ends up.
Historically orbital slingshots generally make use of this effect. Technically an asteroid can passively get a boost from an orbital slingshot but probes do a burn because they get more bang from the same propelent.
Another problem which will not be considered a problem big enough for who is causing it but then which will bite us all in the butt in 25-50-100 years and then it is going to become everyone's fault.
I'll nickname them as "Anthropogenic Meterorites" (unless they already have a name.)
I will also be the one starting the debate that I don't believe they are actually man-made, meteorites have been falling forever and there is no scientific consensus it's our fault.
Well I think the bigger issue is a "Kessler syndrome" type problem than meteorites (i.e space junk hitting the earth), although we've already seen issues with the latter..
