PLANETARY SECURITYSpace Tractor Beams May Not Be the Stuff of Sci-fi for Long
Researchers are drawing on one of the oldest tropes in science fiction: tractor beams like the ones the Starship Enterprise uses to safely move asteroids out of the way. Using devices called “electron beams,” these space dumpster trucks would slowly haul that debris to safety without ever having to touch it—all by tapping into the same kind of physics that make your socks stick to your pants in the dryer.
On Feb. 10, 2009, disaster struck hundreds of miles above the Siberian Peninsula. That evening, a defunct Russian satellite orbiting Earth crashed into a communications satellite called Iridium 33 moving at a speed of thousands of miles per hour. Both spacecraft erupted into a rain of shrapnel, sending more than 1,800 chunks of debris spiraling around the globe.
No other spacecraft (or humans) were harmed, but for many aerospace engineers, the event was a sign of things to come. Space, it seemed, was getting crowded.
NASA estimates that about 23,000 chunks of debris the size of a softball or larger currently swirl through space. All that junk means that another collision like the one that destroyed Iridium 33 becomes increasingly likely every year—only this time, the fallout could be much worse.
“The problem with space debris is that once you have a collision, you’re creating even more space debris,” said Julian Hammerl, a doctoral student in aerospace engineering sciences at CU Boulder. “You have an increased likelihood of causing another collision, which will create even more debris. There’s a cascade effect.”
Hammerl and a team led by Professor Hanspeter Schaub have a plan for stopping those cascades before they start. The researchers are drawing on one of the oldest tropes in science fiction: tractor beams like the ones the Starship Enterprise uses to safely move asteroids out of the way.
Imagine this: In the not-so-distant future, a fleet of small spacecraft could whiz around Earth, rendezvousing with dead hunks of metal in geosynchronous orbit around the planet. Then, using devices called “electron beams,” these space dumpster trucks would slowly haul that debris to safety without ever having to touch it—all by tapping into the same kind of physics that make your socks stick to your pants in the dryer.
“We’re creating an attractive or repulsive electrostatic force,” said Schaub, chair of the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “It’s similar to the tractor beam you see in Star Trek, although not nearly as powerful.”
First, Schaub and his colleagues must solve a series of challenges, which they’ve described in numerous recent studies. The researchers, for example, are employing a new facility to replicate the surprisingly complex environment around Earth. They’re also setting their sights on how tractor beams might someday remove debris from the region of space between Earth and the moon.
