Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
December 12, 2016 02:00 am

Japan Sends Its New Space Junk-Fighting Technology To The ISS

What floats 249 miles in the sky, stretches 2,300 feet, and took over 10 years to develop?An anonymous reader quotes Phys.org:Japan launched a cargo ship Friday bound for the International Space Station, carrying a"space junk" collector that was made with the help of a fishnet company... Researchers are using a so-called electrodynamic tether made from thin wires of stainless steel and aluminum... The electricity generated by the tether as it swings through the Earth's magnetic field is expected to have a slowing effect on the space junk, which should, scientists say, pull it into a lower and lower orbit. Eventually the detritus will enter the Earth's atmosphere, burning up harmlessly long before it has a chance to crash to the planet's surface. Bloomberg has some interesting background:The experiment is part of an international cleanup effort planning to safeguard astronauts and about $900 billion worth of space stations, satellites and other infrastructure... Satellite collisions and testing of anti-satellite weapons have added thousands of debris fragments in the atmosphere since 2007, according to NASA... With debris traveling at up to 17,500 miles an hour, the impact of even a marble-size projectile can cause catastrophic damage.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/QRTVdYv_OGI/japan-sends-its-new-space-junk-fighting-technology-to-the-iss

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot