JAXA is going to test removing orbital debris in collaboration with a company that makes fishing nets
The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA is going to launch a mission to resupply the International Space Station on 9 December. The unmanned cargo spacecraft called HTV6, also known as Kounotori-6, which means “White Stork”, will be carrying supplies for the ISS including cube satellites, water, replacement equipment, batteries and scientific apparatus. On board is a unique experimental payload that will test removal of orbital debris. The experiment is called Kounotori Integrated Tether Experiments or (KITE).
The KITE experiment consists of an Electrodynamic tether (EDT), a propulsion system that can accelerate space junk towards the atmosphere of the Earth. The junk burns up before hitting the ground. Space junk is an escalating problem, with more and more useless man made artefacts in orbit. If two pieces of space equipment collide, they create a lot more junk, which can potentially start a deadly chain reaction that can knock out functional space equipment.
The payload is made up of many components. There is a releasing mechanism, the tether itself, an end mass to anchor the tether, and sensors for monitoring the tether. Sensors include a camera, a LIDAR unit to track the tether, and a geomagnetic sensor to monitor the geomagnetic field. The tether has a net shape to be able to tolerate impacts from small pieces of debris. The tether was created by a Japanese company founded way back in 1910, that makes knotless nets for fishing purposes, called Nitto Seimo.
The end mass has a spool reel and a braking reel, with reflectors to allow tracking with the LIDAR. There is a spring to release the end mass. The tether is 700 metres long, and if the test is successful, JAXA will try out an even longer tether around 2020. The end mass weighs 20 kg. JAXA hopes to take learnings from the KITE experiment to create a reliable EDT system for removing debris from orbit.
The experiment by JAXA is a part of an international effort to clean up space debris, according to a report in Bloomberg. There are more than 500,000 pieces of debris in space, and some of them are travelling at 28,163 kilometres per hour. There is a hole in the Hubble telescope caused by orbital debris. Stuffin.space tracks objects in orbit in real time, including orbital debris. NASA has an Orbital Debris Program dedicated to tracking the problem of space junk, and taking efforts to mitigate the problem.
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