Scientists from University of Utah develop new method to get rid of space debris

Space debris has emerged as one of the most severe forms of danger that satellites and space observatories currently face in orbit. Scientists have been trying hard to tackle the issue of space junk and to strengthen their efforts, engineers from the University of Utah have come up with a new idea to get rid of the problem using magnets, as per Fox13Now. Reports by NASA suggest that the Earth is currently swarmed with over 27,000 pieces of junk, both big and small, that travel at bullet speed. Professor Jake Abbott, who is leading the anti-space debris team, told Fox13Now that he and his colleagues figured out a way to eliminate the debris using magnetic fields generated by rapidly spinning the magnets.

"We’ve figured out how to rapidly spin magnets that surround these objects and then apply forces and torques to the objects and actually manipulate them using magnetic fields, even though they’re not made of magnetic metal."

The idea and its application

Reportedly, the team developed the method after using a series of magnets which they tested on a copper ball that was placed on a plastic raft in a water tank. Scientists found that the magnets were not only able to move the sphere but also rotated the ball. According to the experts, this technology can be deployed in robots that would be able to either bring the debris in a decaying orbit or push them away into space to avoid any danger to functional satellites. Another benefit of technology can be the control it would provide to the engineers as they would be able to manipulate fragile objects and would allow them to stop a damaged satellite from spinning out of its orbit.

Meanwhile, the Utah university scientists hope that NASA would soon adopt the technology to address the outer space issue as they certainly wouldn't want any harm to the International Space Station (ISS).

The problem with space junk

Space debris is a major problem and there have been times when two large dead satellites have almost collided, and the International Space Station also were forced to resort to their emergency manoeuvres at least 3 times in order to avoid getting hit with space debris. These collisions may be a big problem but the biggest problems are the explosions that take place in orbit due to the left-over energy by the fuel, batteries etc.

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