With more than 8000 satellites in space, Chinese scientists use 'new technique' to clean up threatening space junk

Chinese space scientists are using an enormous space sail to reduce the orbit of the newly launched Long March 2 rocket, China’s state-owned Global Times reported on July 6. This is the first experiment ever carried out on a rocket.

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This deorbiting screen developed by Institute 805 of the Shanghai Academy of Spacecraft Technology (SAST) allows a malfunctioning or ‘dead’ spacecraft to leave orbit faster to contain the spread of space debris.

It was mounted on the payload capsule of the Long March-2D Y64 carrier rocket that was launched into space on June 23 and put into orbit on June 26, according to SAST.

The sails are kite-like sheets that stretch up to 25 square meters and are one-tenth the diameter of a hair, according to developer SAST.

Once opened, the sail increases the drag acting on the spacecraft, which is why it is also called a ‘drag’ sail, thus slowing the spacecraft out of its orbit, where it will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere within minutes. many years.

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“The thin sail uses the aerodynamic resistance created by the thin atmosphere of the low-orbit environment to slow down the satellite and gradually leave its original orbit slowly,” the SAST developer explained to the Global Times.

According to SAST developers, their sails could allow a 300 kilogram payload capsule to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere within two years. This allows for a much faster deorbiting process that could take hundreds of years.

Image File: China Space Station

The Threat From Orbital Debris In Space

If deorbiting steps are not taken, satellites can last hundreds of years in space until their service is complete, posing a threat to other active spacecraft in orbit.

A famous example is the collision between ‘Iridium 33’, an active American commercial satellite, and the malfunctioning Cosmos 2251 of the Soviet Union in 2009. The two satellites collided at a speed of 41,843 kph, at an altitude of 789 kilometers over Siberia. .

The crash resulted in 2,300 large traceable pieces of debris and countless smaller pieces of debris scattered over a thousand kilometers in space, causing problems for the next space program.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), an estimated 13,100 satellites have been launched into orbit since 1957, with 8,410 remaining in space and 5,800 still functioning.

In addition, up to 27,000 smaller pieces of debris are also being tracked by NASA, dense in the orbital zone and moving very fast—25,266.70 kilometers per hour in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Space Debris Visualization (US Air Force Space Command)

The total mass of all objects in orbit is about 9,900 tons, while statistical models show 130 million pieces of debris measuring from 1 mm to 1 cm.

Dangerous Encounter With Space Debris

In March 2022, the remnants of China’s Long March 3C rocket crashed into the Moon, creating a 65-foot-wide crater on the Moon’s surface. If this piece were to crash into the International Space Station (instead), it could have disastrous consequences.

For example, in November 2021, the ISS was forced to maneuver to avoid debris from the now-defunct Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite that China destroyed in a 2007 anti-satellite missile test.

The satellite has exploded into more than 3,500 pieces of debris, most of which fell into the orbital region of the ISS.

Similarly, even Russia destroyed one of the defunct Soviet-era satellites, Cosmos 1408, in an anti-satellite weapons test in November 2021, creating a field with at least 1,500 pieces of debris that could be tracked in low orbit forcing the ISS crew to take cover several times. times when the station’s orbit intersects with the trash.

A radar image shows the Cosmos 1408 satellite before (left) and after the impact from a Russian anti-satellite test on November 15, 2021. (Numerica Corporation)

The last example of an ISS evasion maneuver was on June 16, when the ISS crew had to perform a complex maneuver to avoid orbiting debris from Kosmos-1408.

As of August 2020, the ISS has performed 27 collision avoidance maneuvers since 1999.

Despite this maneuver, a piece of space junk hit the ISS robot arm provided by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Canadarm2, causing a 5mm diameter hole, as seen during a routine inspection in May 2021.

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