MAI students designed a space garbage collector

Students of the Moscow Aviation Institute designed a device to protect space against debris. Such a cleaner may be used both on the International Space Station and on the Russian orbital station. The device is supposed to collect small debris up to 10 centimeters in size.

–        Collisions with small-sized space debris do not lead to catastrophic consequences, but they get dangerous, high speed and uncontrollability. The development of satellite systems entails a further increase in the amount of space debris, so the task of removing it is becoming more and more urgent, – says Elena Momot, the co-author of the work and student of the Institute No. 6 "Aerospace".

According to the project, the device will be made of two parts - a shuttle and a block with a grid, the so-called kamikaze block. The principle of the operation is as follows: the garbage collector flies up to potentially dangerous objects and launches a kamikaze block. As the result of the capture, the garbage, along with the grid, departs from its trajectory and either burns up in the dense layers of the atmosphere, or shifts to the burial orbits. In turn, the block shuttle safely returns to the station for further operations.

One of the advantages of the device is the simplicity of its design, due to which it is possible to assemble it in MAI Student Design Bureau, adds Elena Momot.

According to NASA estimates, as of January 2022, there were over 9 thousand tons of garbage in orbit of the Earth, from idle satellites and rocket stages to small objects. The number of objects larger than 10 centimeters exceeded 25 thousand, and with a diameter of 1 to 10 centimeters – 500 thousand.