Nets and harpoons to hunt zombie garbage in space

On July 2, a satellite destined to measure and monitor ice from the poles, called CrioSat-2, operated by the European Space Agency, orbited, as usual, about 700 meters above ground when the engineers in command They detected a piece of space scrap floating in their direction. Following the trajectory of both objects, they found that the probabilities of an impact did nothing but increase, so a week later they decided to start up their propulsion system and place the CrioSat on another trajectory. 50 minutes after completing the maneuver, the scrap was crossing its previous position at a speed of approximately 4 km per second.

This type of maneuvers to avoid accidents has become more and more common as the satellites, probes and pieces of both that populate our orbit increased. In 2017, companies, governments and armies, as well as amateur projects, launched 400 satellites into space, four times more than the annual average between 2000 and 2010. The numbers can increase even more if companies like Boeing or SpaceX go ahead with plans already announced to place strings of communications satellites that will equal in quantity all those sent throughout the history of space exploration.

Zombie garbage, risk of collision

We are not just filling the garbage space like we are doing with the Earth. The most urgent problem is that this can become a danger. In 2009 a US commercial satellite collided with a Russian communications satellite already out of use, creating thousands of new pieces of garbage with which other satellites can now collide, and every movement to avoid consumes fuel that in theory must be used for the mission of each satellite in question. It is like a laborious video game in which it is increasingly difficult not to hit something while the source of energy, limited from the beginning, is running out.