Space Junk
Space Junk, or space debris, is primarily human-made objects that are left in low Earth Orbit.
NASA estimates there are millions of pieces of space debris flying around uncontrolled. Some pieces can reach speeds of 18,000 miles an hour, about seven times faster than a bullet.
In an effort to clean up Earth’s orbit, companies like AstroScale are trying to step in. The company is working on a mission that will grab a piece of junk – part of a used rocket -- and remove it safely from orbit.
AstroScale has had some success already. Now, the company will embark on a new mission, named ADRAS-J2, to demonstrate its technology. AstroScale COO Chris Blackerby said this upcoming mission is branching off the work from ADRAS-J. The predecessor mission flew close by and inspected the rocket piece that ADRAS-j2 will capture and remove.
“This thing is going 17,000 miles an hour,” Blackerby said. “It goes roughly four to five miles per second, and we have to go up there, identify it, match its rotation, fly around it, all the while taking high-quality images of the object. It's something that's fairly unprecedented.”
On the upper stage of the rocket piece, Blackerby said, there’s a payload adapter that the ADRAS-J2 spacecraft will be able to grab using its robotic arms. But not all pieces of space junk have convenient handles.
In the future, he said satellites and other spacecraft should be built with technology that can allow any object to be captured.
“It was a couple generations ago,” Blackerby said. “They had cars where seat belts were an optional buy-in…we look at that now ‘We're like, whoa, you guys. Seat belts were an option. That should be pretty standard, right?’ I think our children, our grandchildren are going to look back at us and say, ‘Wait, you mean docking plates weren't standard? You had to like go to every single spacecraft and figure out how to grab onto it?’ I think we're going to be at the cusp of making that change.”
While this mission will demonstrate how to remove and capture a piece of space junk, Blackerby said it’s not the final solution, and it’s unlikely that humans will be able to remove all of the debris.
“We're not going to be able to completely buy down entirely the risk of a potential accident in orbit,” Blackerby said. “That's not going to happen, but we better start preparing to reduce the likelihood of that risk. We better start preparing not only to remove the debris, but to learn how to service a spacecraft. What we talk about at AstroScale a lot is getting to a circular space economy, the same way we talk about doing that on Earth. So rather than just launching and leaving things in orbit, let's learn how to reuse it. Let's learn how to recycle it, refuel it, repair it.”
Space on Tap
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched back in August on a mission to study things like exoplanets, or planets that orbit other stars, and dark matter and dark energy -- invisible forces that shape the cosmos.
The mission launched on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, blasting off to its destination about a million miles from Earth to Lagrange Point 2.
For our third installment of Space on Tap, a special event series from “Are We There Yet?” we recorded a live taping speaking with Derek Demeter, the planetary director at the Seminole State College. He’s also a freelance photographer for Central Florida Public Media.
Demeter photographed and captured a 360-degree video of the Roman Space telescope launching, watching it take off from the press site at the Kennedy Space Center. He plans to use it for presentations at the planetarium, giving attendees a unique view of the launch.
He said prior to launch, he had to set up his camera that captured that full dome video closer to the launch pad, and that it’s exposed to the elements.
“I was just hoping it would it would go,” Demeter said of the rocket launch and countdown. “All you could do at that point is you're watching this, hoping that it went, you get back on the bus. They take you to the place where you pick up the camera. Of course, you're shaking because you're like, ‘Is this going to happen?’---It was just an amazing feeling to be able to actually get that content because this is really the first ever this kind of footage to be used in a planetarium dome.”
As far as photographing launches from a distance, Demeter said his shots must be focused and stabilized since the rocket moves at such high speeds.
“One of the things that helps me as a rocket photographer is I do a lot of birding photography,” Demeter said. “You're using a motion stabilization. You're looking through your camera lens. You want to make sure you're getting the shot. A lot of times, you're just holding the trigger down and just getting burst of images ---I’ve gotten 1000’s of shots.
Roman’s technology is powerful. It's hardware allows the telescope to peer into the universe to study exoplanets. NASA said Roman has a view 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope.
“The main camera that Nancy Grace Roman has is 300 megapixels in resolution,” Demeter said. “That's wild. I mean, just to give you an idea, if they printed one photo of that, it would cover an eight-story building. It's incredible, and you wouldn't see any pixelation in that print.”
This show was recorded live on October15 at Hourglass Brewing in Longwood, Florida.
