The British-led mission to test techniques to clear up space junk has demonstrated a harpoon in orbit.
The test was part of the University of Surrey’s RemoveDEBRIS mission, which is designed to try out various ways of getting rid of debris in orbit. The satellite fired the projectile into a target board held at a distance on the end of a boom.
Getting hit by even a small piece of this debris could be enough to take out a functioning satellite, and the collision could create even more dangerous pieces of junk in the process.
That’s why those in the aerospace industry are interested in figuring out ways to remove debris from the space environment to make Earth orbit cleaner and safer for future space travel.
The £13m RemoveDebris project was launched last year to showcase ways of tackling the growing litter problem in orbit.
This test was merely a practice run, but it was successful. The experiment proved that harpoons could be a viable technology for clearing away space junk. RemoveDEBRIS, the spacecraft behind this harpoon test is the work of a partnership between Surrey University, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, and Airbus Defence and Space. These entities are dedicated to texting technologies that could help eliminate space junk, which is increasingly clogging up our orbital neighborhood.
Video of the event shows the miniature spear fly straight and true, and with such force that it actually breaks the target structure. But, importantly, the harpoon's barbs deploy and hold on to the board, preventing it from floating away.
It has already shown how a net could be used to capture a piece of junk.
It has also run the rule over a novel tracking system. This vision-based navigation (VBN) technology essentially tells a hunter spacecraft how its prey is behaving - how it's moving and even tumbling.
Space junk is composed of defunct satellites, anything an astronaut has dropped, retired rocket engines, and as more and more space junk crashes into each other fragments of these collisions add to space junk as well. These pieces of floating debris are a genuine risk for robotic, and crewed space ventures.
In the future, similar satellites may be able to drag themselves down to Earth with a harpooned piece of debris in tow.
