Fishing for space debris

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Dick Jacobson
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Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2004 9:21 pm
Location: Cottage Grove, MN

Fishing for space debris

Post by Dick Jacobson »

This idea is so bizarre that I wouldn't believe it except that it was printed in the Feb. 14 issue of Aviation Week. A Japanese company has proposed to use a giant net similar to a fishing net to remove space debris from orbit. I haven't found this news item on the Web yet, so here it is:

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will be working with a venerable Japanese fishnet manufacturer on an orbital net to clean the spaceways of debris. Nitto Seimo Co., a century-old firm in Fukuyama, is working with JAXA engineers on a concept that would launch a metal net several kilometers long into orbit, unfurl it and then use an electrodynamic tether to haul it back into the atmosphere along with a load of space junk. According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the net company believes it has a workable approach using a mesh of aluminum and steel fibers that can withstand the impact of fast-moving orbital debris. The space net builds on strong, compactly storable knotless nets first developed by Nitto Seimo in 1925, according to the newspaper.
30-inch homemade Newtonian with periscope
20-inch homemade equatorial Newtonian with periscope
14-inch homemade equatorial Newtonian
10-inch Newtonian that folds flat
6-inch Russian Maksutov-Newtonian on Vixen equatorial mount
Too many small scopes and binoculars to mention
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