If you remember the Skylab, the defunct space probe which crashed in 1979 when every human being on this planet panicked because the crash site was not known to the scientists, you will know the dangers of obsolete and junk satellites. According to NASA scientists there are around 500,000 pieces of debris the size of a marble, or larger, orbiting Earth. This orbital junk can travel at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour — fast enough to cause serious damage to satellites and even the International Space Station (ISS). Now, a team of scientists from Japan’s Riken research institute have come up with an ambitious plan to eliminate this very space debris with the help of space lasers. In a paper published in the latest issue of the journal Acta Astronautica, the researchers proposed a method that basically involves blasting an estimated 3,000 tons of debris through a fiber optic laser mounted on the ISS. The researchers have proposed a two step process to obliterating the space junk to eternity. First they plan to use existing infrared telescope of the European Space Agency’s Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO) to track and fix position of each space debris revolving the Earth. Once they have the needful information about the space junk, they plan to use a fiber-based laser system to shoot the objects until they are knocked out of their orbit and destroyed during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The scientists have already started working on their plan and are now deploying a small proof-of-concept experiment on the ISS using a small, 20 centimeter version of the EUSO telescope and a laser with 100 fibers. If the Japanese scientists succeed, they will have made our spacecrafts, ISS and Earth a safer place to live.
