The European Space Agency, an international organization of European countries that aims to explore and use space, is testing a new solution to reduce the amount of space debris.
Cosmic garbage, i.e. objects made by humans remaining in orbit around the Earth, which do not perform the tasks already planned for them, is a very big problem today. Worn rocket components, inactive satellites, fragments caused by collisions or explosions, and even paint residues that are painted by rockets, all pose a serious threat to active satellites, which is why the ESA decided to do something about it.
Therefore, a series of tests was carried out, which included blowing up the batteries to prevent further waste. Experiments took place in special shelters where engineers destroyed lithium-ion cosmic batteries using various methods such as shooting them, overheating or overloading.
Thanks to this, they could not only check how to carry out explosions, to reduce the amount of space debris and to prevent this unwanted. As one ESA engineer claims, scientists are aware of 250 satellite explosions, of which 10 were caused by a battery explosion. Each of them included older technologies, because newer lithium-ion batteries no longer have such tendencies, but you always have to take it into account.
All tests were conducted as part of the Clean Space Initiative, which is to prevent similar cases in the future and to explore the possibility of conscious destruction of batteries to minimize the amount of unnecessary debris in space. Hence, over 200 different experiments, on different batteries and cells, including simulated cosmic rays, purposeful aging by means of continuous charging and unloading or shooting with 8mm projectiles.