Practical System to Remove Lethal Untracked Orbital Debris

Abstract

The environment in low Earth orbit (LEO) is congested with orbital debris threatening the safety of all states, actors, and enterprises who wish to use space. Removing orbital debris is unquestionably one of the top space challenges facing space actors of this generation, one that demands cross-disciplinary solutions to solve this complex systems engineering problem. Based on a review of past and recent approaches to active debris removal, many of the currently proposed technologies and systems focus on removing defunct satellites and other large derelict objects in LEO that are actively cataloged and tracked. While removing the larger space objects is a necessary goal, space sustainability experts agree that the orbital debris ranging from 4 mm to 9 cm poses the greatest risk to operational spacecraft and presents unique challenges for its removal. This paper offers a novel technical approach for the development and near-term deployment of an orbital debris removal system based on existing technology that would be capable of reducing lethal untracked orbital debris in LEO.