Fascinating that 3D printing has now entered the space age:-

http://kwhs.wharton.upenn.edu/2018/11/young-scientists-worlds-lightest-satellite/

 

Very interesting, I was expecting more information on how the satellite was made but it was more about how they achieved their dreams. Good read though.

I wonder when we will be able to 3D print airplane parts and fly the lightest airplane ever.

 

Wow, those are really tiny. I wonder if we'll get to a point where there are too many launches which results in a layer of space junk that we can't get past.
At some point one satellite might collide with another and just start a chain reaction of collisions

 

Space junk is a real problem. There are future mega constellations of satellites going up in the near future. And the risk of collisions are real.

Here is a good read about a few crashes in the space and about space debris.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06170-1

 

I actually heard something on the radio on about a company developing a spacecraft that will go up and collect space junk "with a magnet" then launch it all back down into the atmosphere to create "an artificial shooting star display".

I'm not sure on the science behind that though!

 

Ah yeah I have read about that somewhere, so the spacecraft would bring the debris into the earths atmosphere and put it on a trajectory to crash onto earth and when the debris will be entering into the earths atmosphere it’ll burn putting up a shooting star display I think that’s what they mean. However the problem with that idea was most spacecraft debris are in small pieces and proper trajectory have to be calculated for each one of them to enter into earth and crash into a safe region. And collection of these small debris using a spacecraft is very dangerous and very expensive because the debris are moving at very high speeds and the spacecraft would have to run behind the debris or intersect it, then slow it down using magnetic induction and then once the space craft catches it the trajectory will be calculated and the spacecraft would have to fly to the exact position of release and then release it and do this again for the next junk.

There was another problem that some debris might burn or evaporate while re entering the earth causing toxic release of chemicals because these junk are not as well protected or shielded like they used to be when they were sent up. One way to tackle this was the junk will be packed in a shell structure by the spacecraft that is sending it back. And the shell will be destroyed upon impact on earth but it will protect the debris from harming the environment. Even cleaning the space is not so simple.

 

I also read that some satellite companies are having trouble insuring their satellites because of the problem of space junk. When you consider the billions of dollars being spent in this area, this is a real problem for the long term financial viability of the sector.

It will be down to engineers to pick up the pieces again and come up with an "outside the box" solution. Any ideas?

 

Well it would be much simpler to contain all the junk in a space net. If we could use thrusters and connect it to a net and keep it moving with the earths grav field. I think it would work pretty well in collecting all the junk into one place. After that we can just tie it all up into one large bunch instead of loose pieces flying everywhere.

 

Well it would be much simpler to contain all the junk in a space net. If we could use thrusters and connect it to a net and keep it moving with the earths grav field. I think it would work pretty well in collecting all the junk into one place. After that we can just tie it all up into one large bunch instead of loose pieces flying everywhere.

 

Would a net work if the parts are moving that fast though? Maybe you could match 80-90% of the velocity, so most of the energy of the collision is reduced.