BRENT: The International Space Station is continually pelted by small pieces of space junk, and on occasions needs to shift its orbit to avoid major collisions.
Now Japanese researchers have come up with a laser system that could vaporise bits of space debris before they makes contact with the floating laboratory.
There’s a huge amount of space debris orbiting the Earth – as many as 3,000 tons of the stuff. It’s made up of bits of old satellite, rockets and other man-made items that have been left behind.
Because of the speed at which these items are travelling, even a tiny screw can cause damage to the Space Station, so keeping track of all the pieces has become a major undertaking.
That’s where Japan’s Riken Computational Astrophysics Laboratory steps in. The team there is installing a new ‘Extreme Universe Space Observatory’ in its ISS module in 2017.
The equipment is designed to monitor the atmosphere for ultraviolet emissions from cosmic rays, but it could double as a precision space junk tracking system.
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