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Tokyo: Scientists and start-ups in Japan are racing to work on projects to try to find a solution to a growing problem of space junk, including laser beam technology, wooden satellites and space “tugboats”.
The latest European Space Agency figures indicate that more than one million pieces of space debris exceed one centimeter in size, and are the remains of satellites or parts of rockets, orbiting around the Earth at high speeds.
This number is likely to rise disproportionately with the emergence of “giant constellations” of satellites that provide a faster and more widespread Internet.
“We are entering an era when a large number of satellites will be launched in succession, which will make space more crowded,” says Miki Ito, director of the young Japanese company Astroscale, which has a goal of achieving sustainability in space.
“Simulations have shown that space will become unusable if we continue our activities in it in this way, so we must improve the space environment before it is too late,” Ito added in an interview with AFP.
Accidents in space are increasingly being recorded, as in January a Chinese satellite was hit by shrapnel from an old Soviet satellite. And last year, a hole was recorded in the thermal cap of the International Space Station’s robotic arm from a residue just a few millimeters in size.
small waste
“Small waste is a problem because there is no accurate information about it,” Toru Yamamoto, a researcher at the Japanese Space Agency, told AFP, unlike large waste that has names and its locations and speed are subject to “continuous tracking operations.”
Although there are rules that stipulate effective practices in reducing space debris, such as directing expired satellites towards an “orbital cemetery,” these rules are insufficient, especially in the absence of an international text that obliges the authorities to adopt them by law.
Tadanori Fukushima, an engineer at the Japanese company “SkyPerfect GaySat”, which specializes in operating satellites, confirmed to AFP that “a geosynchronous satellite receives annually about 100 warnings of approaching debris.
Fukushima founded a startup to try to solve this problem, and the technology his company is still experimenting with is a laser beam that vaporizes the surface of space debris, creating a charge of energy that sends the waste to a different orbit.
a test
Fukushima hopes to conduct the first test of this technology in space by the spring of 2025, in cooperation with several research institutes. As for the Astroscale project, it is more advanced and is represented by a type of space “towing vehicle” that works on the basis of magnets to pull out expired satellites.
The company succeeded in its first test, which it conducted last year, and it plans to launch a second test by the end of 2024, in partnership with the European Space Agency and the British company OneWeb, which launched a group of satellites in low orbit.
Among the unusual solutions are wooden satellites, in which another Japanese team sees a solution to the issue of space junk, as wood is a material that disappears completely when the moon returns to Earth.
This project of Kyoto University (western Japan) and the Sumitomo Forestry group specializing in deforestation is still in its infancy. In March, pieces of wood were sent to the International Space Station to test how the wood responds to cosmic rays.
Fukushima considers Japan to be one of the most active space explorers in developing solutions to the problem of space debris.
But other companies from around the world are also seeking to enter this emerging market, which may actually take off in 2030, according to Fukushima.
a necklace
At the end of 2020, the European Space Agency signed a contract worth nearly $100 million with Swiss start-up ClearSpace to send in 2025 the first-ever commercial mission to clean up debris from orbit.
American companies such as “Orbit Fab” and “Spice Logistics” (a subsidiary of the Northrop Grumman Group that specializes in the aerospace and military industries), in addition to the Australian company “Numan Space”, are working on a number of services related to repairing satellites to extend the life of their use. By refueling it in space, for example.
Yamamoto sees the problem of space debris as so complex that a wide range of solutions are necessary, adding “there is no comprehensive solution” to the issue.