Laser/space material uncooperative propulsion for orbital debris removal and asteroid, meteoroid, and comet deflection

Details Laser/space material uncooperative propulsion for orbital debris removal and asteroid, meteoroid, and comet deflection Laser/space material uncooperative propulsion for orbital debris removal and asteroid, meteoroid, and comet deflection

Jan 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999aipc..458.1237c&link_type=abstract

Space technology and applications international forum -1999. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 458, pp. 1237-1246 (1999).

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Other Topics In Areas Of Applied And Interdisciplinary Physics

Scientific paper

Orbital debris in low-Earth orbit in the size range from 1 to 10 cm in diameter can be detected but not tracked reliably enough to be avoided by spacecraft. It can cause catastrophic damage even to a shielded spacecraft. With adaptive optics, a ground-based pulsed laser ablating the debris surface can produce enough propulsion in several hundred pulses to cause such debris to reenter the atmosphere. A single laser station could remove all of the 1-10 cm debris in three years or less. A technology demonstration of laser space propulsion is proposed which would pave the way for the implementation of such a debris removal system. The cost of the proposed demonstration is comparable with the estimated annual cost of spacecraft operations in the present orbital debris environment. Orbital debris is not the only space junk that is deleterious to the Earth's environment. Collisions with asteroids have caused major havoc to the Earth's biosphere many times in the ancient past. Since the possibility still exists for major impacts, it is shown that it is possible to scale up the systems to prevent these catastrophic collisions given sufficient early warning.

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