In case you missed them, here’s a few new pieces I’ve written and published for Scientific American, Hakai magazine, and Inside Science over the past month. Thanks as usual to all of my excellent editors. I’m only posting brief excerpts here, so if you’re interested, please check out the whole thing using the links below.
Scientists Test Tiny Labels for Sorting Out Space Debris
Numerous bits of orbiting debris threaten spacecraft, so two teams propose tracking them with unique license plate-like transponders.
Artist’s depiction of objects currently in low Earth orbit, shown at an exaggerated scale to make them visible. (Credit: European Space Agency)
Thousands of known pieces of debris already clog low Earth orbit, with many more expected as research and commercial projects begin to launch swarms of small satellites known as CubeSats.
David Palmer, an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, and his colleagues are working on a way to keep tabs on the growing space traffic. Palmer normally studies pulsars — distant celestial bodies that emit regular pulses of radio waves — but he realized that their low-power signals could be a model for tracking human-made objects in space. This inspired Palmer and his colleagues to develop postage stamp-sized beacons for satellites that are uniquely identifiable, like license plates in space. These devices, if successful, could become ubiquitous in the industry and help address the worsening problem of proliferating space junk.
“We’re looking to get it out of the experimental phase. In the next couple years, people will want them for their own satellites. If all goes well, maybe in five to ten years, there will be requirements that everything that goes into space has to have one of these,” Palmer said.
This space license plate, called an Extremely Low Resource Optical Identifier (ELROI) by Palmer and his colleague Rebecca Holmes, uses flashes of laser light at a precise frequency and pattern to give its satellite host a serial number. It can be attached to anything and comes with its own solar panel for an independent power source, so that it can keep on running even if the satellite itself no longer functions. They’re aiming to launch the first test model with a New Mexico Tech satellite in late September…
[Read the entire piece in Inside Science, published on 31 July.]
Ramin Skibba 