Space Garbage Cleaning Can Be Done

Materials from satellites, spacecraft, rockets and so on are currently abundant in space. The objects are allowed to remain in space without attempting to be removed from orbit or dropped to Earth.
Orbital debris that has become space junk is expected to continue to grow. The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recorded more than 27,000 pieces of debris the size of a ball orbiting Earth.
“The US government and world governments are aware of this problem because more and more of it is accumulating every day,” said University of Utah mechanical engineering professor Jake J Abbott as quoted by the university’s website.
Thousands of space objects that move at high speed, fast enough to damage satellites that are still active in orbit and or spacecraft. To get rid of space debris, Abbott and his team found a new method to manipulate orbiting debris with rotating magnets.
He said this robotic technology could one day direct pieces of extraterrestrial junk into orbit or away from orbit without touching them. In this way it can even be used to repair approaching objects that do not work for reuse.
In the study entitled Dexterous Magnetic Manipulation of Conductive Non-magnetic Objects, Abbott used a concept involving unmagnetized metal objects in space with rotating magnets.
“When metal debris is subjected to a changing magnetic field, electrons circulate within the metal in circular circles. Like when you spin your coffee cup and it goes round and round,” Abbott said in a report published in Friday’s issue of the journal Nature. ) last week.
This process turns pieces of debris into electromagnets that create torque and force. The resulting torque and force allows it to control where the debris goes without physically touching or carrying it.
The idea of ​​using this type of magnetic current to manipulate objects in space is not really new. The difference Abbott and his team discovered was the coordinated use of multiple sources of magnetic fields, allowing objects to move in six degrees of motion, from only one degree previously.
“What we want to do is manipulate the object, not just push it but actually manipulate it like you would on Earth,” he said. “This form of deft manipulation has never been done before,” explains Abbott.
With this concept, scientists can even stop a damaged satellite from spinning wildly while it is being repaired. The trick is to take an object floating in space with a robotic arm, then place it in a position that can be manipulated.
“But if it spins out of control, you can break the robot’s arm. This fracture will create more new waste,” he said.

No Touch
This method also allows scientists to manipulate very fragile objects. This magnet will apply a gentler force to the entire object so that no part of it is torn apart, since nothing is touched.
To test their research, the team used a series of magnets to move a copper ball over a plastic raft in a water tank. This is the best way to simulate slow-moving objects in microgravity. Magnets move the ball not only in a square shape, but also rotate the ball.
Abbott said the newly discovered process could be used with a rotating magnet in a robotic arm, a stationary magnet that creates a rotating magnetic field, such as in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners.
He believes this principle of manipulating nonmagnetic metal objects with magnets can also be applied beyond cleaning up space debris. “I started to open my mind to what potential applications there were,” Abbott said. “We have a new way to apply styles to objects for precise alignment without touching them.”
The idea of ​​manipulating space debris with magnets could soon be implemented to help fix the problem of space debris orbiting Earth. “NASA tracks thousands of space debris in the same way air traffic controllers track planes. You have to know where they are because you could accidentally hit them,” Abbott said. hi/I-1