Around 14000 pieces of garbage are obstructing the orbit of the Low Earth, but this number could be reduced by a new invention that implies a satellite using the plasma escape of its him.
The huge amounts of space garbage in orbit, ranging from nuts and screws to lodges of rockets and dead satellites, represent a serious danger for satellites and the International Space Station, which has to regularly take evasive measures to dodge the Spactnel space.
Therefore, scientists and engineers have legs working in ways to clean the orbit of the Low Earth. Most of the solutions have included spacecraft that could grab space trash with robotic arms, networks and ties. However, the problem with thesis ideas is that much of the garbage is falling. This means that there is a risk that the spacecraft is trapped in the chaotic movement.
A contactless method would be safer, and a proposal is to use the ion motor escape from a spacecraft to gradually push but firmly against a piece of space debris, slowing down the rubble down until it falls from the orbit.
However, an ion engine is designed to push a backward saved. Shoot the plasma escape from an ion engine in a piece of space garbage, therefore, the garbage extraction satellite would move away.
Now he thought, Kazunori Takahashi or Tohoku University in Japan has developed a solution. Instead of having a single escape, an extraction satellite could two escapes pointing in opposite directions. The thrust of each escape would cancel the other, allowing the extraction satellite to hold the station while doing its work of exorbiting the space garbage.
Takahashi calls its system a “plasma thrust without bidirectional plasma ejection type electrodes.” An ion engine works using an inert gas as propellant; Often this gas is xenon, but Takahashi used argon.
“It can be operated using argon with an efficiency similar to that of Xenon, but providing a reduced cost for the propulsion device,” Takahashi told Space.com.
The gas fills a camera, with a cathode on one side that produces a cloud of electrons that are then attracted to a discharge wall loaded with color of color. On their way, they interact with gas and ionize it. Ionized gas is called plasma, and is electrically loaded in such a way that it can be directed and accelerated by electromagnetic fields through a propulsion nozzle, producing thrust.
In the Takahashi system, “plasma can flow along the field lines to both sides, providing the expulsion of bidirectional plasma,” he said.
The thrust of an ion engine is initially small compared to a chemical rocket, but over time it can accumulate and become comparable. However, with so many parts of space garbage to eliminate, time is the essence.
To exorbit a piece of space garbage, a meter and with a dough or 1 ton in less than 100 days it requires the constant application or 30 mili-news (mn) or thrust. This is greater than the thrust caused by the ion engine aboard the Japanese mission of aerospace agencies (Jaxa) Hayabusa2 to the Ryugu asteroid, for example. Hayabusa2 achieved 10 milli-news (MN) or thrust of 300–500 watts or electric power produced by its solar matrices.
Takahashi’s bidirectional system is much more hungry for power. “You need to have some kilowatts,” he said.
To increase the power of its system, Takahashi introduced a “magnetic cusp” that can keep more plasma away from the discharge wall and force more through the propeller nozzle.
“The specific form of the cusp provides a geometric separation from the wall plasma, reducing plasma loss,” Takahashi said.
This means that there is more of the plasma available to be thrown in space garbage, and more plasma thrust. In laboratory experiments that prove their system with large vacuum tubes that mimic the conditions in space, Takahashi could reach 25 mn, tripling the output power compared to previous experiments.
Takahashi’s bidirectional propeller is designed to eliminate larger parts of space garbage because they are the most likely to lead to a terrifying stage called Kessler syndrome. It describes how a collision between a large satellite and a piece of space garbage could cause a chain reaction as the shrapnel disperses through orbit, instigating more collisions in a runaway effect that could huge swie-ea-the-the-stage or rubble would be too dangerous for the spacecraft or satellites to pass.
In the long term, it could completely block our access to space, so a means to eliminate space garbage becomes increasingly vital as more and more rubble begin to surround the earth.
Takahashi’s work on the bidirectional plasma thrust was published on August 20 in Scientific Reports magazine.
