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Janitor Satellites Designed to Clean Up Space Junk

The proliferation of debris orbiting the Earth – primarily jettisoned rocket and satellite components – is an increasingly critical problem for spacecraft. To combat this threat, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL has been working on CleanSpace One, a project to develop and build the first installment of a family of satellites specially designed to clean up space debris. Although its first model is destined to be destroyed, the CleanSpace One adventure will not be a one-shot deal. "We want to offer and sell a whole family of ready-made systems, designed as sustainably as possible, that are able to de-orbit several different kinds of satellites," explains Swiss Space Center Director Volker Gass. Depending on the funding and industrial partners, this first orbital rendezvous could take place within three to five years.

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    00:00:01 there are more than 12,000 degrees in the lower orbits flying around we were aware the factory was debris and we were hoping we would have no impact shitty worth of activity given position seymour guado cosmodrome Ibaka you'll start Avila Rokita URI villain RB - Sputnik simile it's the fourth of October 1957 and the very first satellite Sputnik has just been launched nowadays there are

    00:00:28 over 700 operational satellites orbiting above our heads sending the signals for our phones television weather information and GPS but there's a problem our current satellites are sharing space with the debris remaining from all of their predecessors which unlike Sputnik haven't fallen back to earth so imagine this satellite Eureka that's behind me

    00:00:52 imagine it having a collision with another satellite about the same size provoking or giving a thousands of new debris x' each at least the size of a fist and more than one kilogram in weight flying around the orbits and destroying other satellites in 2009 the expected happened and the American Iridium satellite collided with debris from an inactive Russian satellite the

    00:01:16 result two thousand more pieces of debris and the destruction of a 55 million dollar satellite something has to be done about this problem collisions between satellite and debris are bound to happen and as one collision multiplies the number of debris and can create up to 2,000 additional debris there's going to be an avalanche effect and more and more satellites going to be

    00:01:38 kicked out or destroyed in orbits a higher risk of impact means higher insurance premiums and the cost of insuring today's active satellites is around 20 billion dollars more importantly aside from the material costs astronauts lives are also at risk we were aware of the existence of debris when we were space walking in a human spaceflight we had really this ethic of

    00:02:02 not leaving anything in space except if we had to for safety reasons the International Space Station has to frequently maneuver to avoid some 12,000 larger pieces of debris that are constantly monitored these larger pieces of debris measure at least 10 centimeters wide just like Swiss cube after the launch of Swiss cube the Space Center decided to

    00:02:26 create a program to develop technologies that would help us remove the briefs from space the challenge for clean space one is to go up there and rendezvous with Swiss cube and then grab it and then bring it down to enter the atmosphere so the technology is to bring that small spacecraft and have the rendezvous or not technologies that you can find off-the-shelf

    00:02:54 at EPFL we're developing micro and electric propulsion systems the systems of propulsion that push ions there are several other technologies that will be needed because Swiss cube was a 10 by 10 and clean space one won't be that much bigger it's not a multi-million development it's a university-based development the second main challenge will be having a deployment of a either

    00:03:26 a robotic arm or a deployment of a mechanism that will embrace or grab exactly Swiss cube at EPFL and at the Swiss Space Center we do have quite a bit of heritage in turf in terms of bio-inspired robotics so we will generate we will create a new family of satellites new technology that will allow us to grow up to space to identify our satellites to grapple them

    00:03:58 to deorbit them and maybe even in the future to bring them back to earth that we need to enter take something now like exactly the same way we need to enter take something about the global warming in a way there's some similarity between the two problems if we don't do anything we'll have big problems in the future you