American scientists are working on a satellite project that will be able to hunt space debris particles up to 1 cm in size. It will do this by capturing signals generated by the movement of these objects in the plasma around the Earth.
A satellite to hunt space debris
Scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks are working on a satellite that will be able to track very small particles of space debris circling our planet. There are a lot of similar efforts, but this one stands out because of the way they plan to detect the pieces of junk.
Space debris has been the focus of attention for the past few decades, as it moves uncontrollably through the orbit at a speed of several kilometers per second. And if it collides with a satellite or station, it will be fatal.
Of course, orbital scrap is tracked both in the optical range and with radar. However, it is extremely difficult to do this for objects with a diameter of about 1 cm. And they have energy comparable to the explosion of a hand grenade.
How to detect space debris?
Currently, NASA estimates that there are about 100 million pieces of debris orbiting the Earth. But only about 1 percent of them can be tracked. And that’s enough for Starlink satellites to have to perform 20,000 evasive maneuvers annually.
Still, scientists believe that it is possible to track small pieces of space debris. After all, they move in the extremely dilute, but still gas around the Earth. And along the force lines of our planet’s magnetic field, its molecules are highly ionized and represent plasma.
When a piece of metal moves through space in such places, a weak electromagnetic pulse is generated. This is what the specialists are going to capture. To do this, the device will have two sensors. One will determine the direction from which the pulse came, and the other will determine its frequency.
Provided by phys.org
