BEIJING: As the number of rocket launches, planetary missions and satellite activities continues to grow, so does the junkyard in space. Many have been pondering the question of how to reduce the amount of debris orbiting Earth. Now, China may have found a solution with its newly deployed “sail” technology.
Hundreds of millions of items of human-made debris are continually circling Earth, including broken rocket bodies, defunct satellites and fragments from orbital collisions.
Keen to tackle the space-junk problem, Chinese aerospace scientists have managed to use a large “sail” to de-orbit spacecraft at the end of their life.
The de-orbiter is a sail-like device made of a thin film, the thickness of which is less than one tenth of the diameter of a hair.
Folded, it is approximately the size of an adult’s palm, but it can cover an area of 25 square meters when unfolded.
When a spacecraft is decommissioned, the sail onboard can be automatically opened. Once deployed, it will increase the effects of air friction, slowing the spacecraft in orbit and speeding up its descent into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up.
Scientists have already tested the technology on space missions. The latest example is the launch of a Long March-2D carrier rocket in southwest China on June 23, which sent three satellites into orbit.
A deorbiting sail attached to the rocket unfolded three days later.
This event marked the first time that a large deorbiting device has been deployed in such a way, according to the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, which made the device. –Agencies
