Garbage Collection in Outer Space? It could be a Reality Thanks to an Innovative Spacecraft

In the near future, the waste floating around space could be collected and disposed of at a quick rate and a low price. It’s all thanks to the NASA-approved spacecraft design created to clean up loose garbage orbiting the Earth and reduce it to a fraction of its size once brought back to the planet’s surface. The intriguing machine is being funded by NASA for the second time, and may come to fruition sooner than we think.

The proposed tool looks much like an super-thin space rug, three feet long and less than 17 micrometers deep. Developers plan to equip it with microscopic digital capabilities and some sort of propelling mechanism for easy placement when in orbit. It could truly be revolutionary in the way waste collection is dealt with in outer space.

Even before completion, this creation has been dubbed Brane craft, and it’s not hard to see why. The Brane craft would naturally drift towards manmade debris every so often and would push the debris out of orbit, causing it to enter the Earth’s atmosphere and fall freely to a specialized garbage collection area.

 It was the Aerospace Corporation in California that came up with this idea, and while fascinating, it’s also risky. The garbage collecting method used by the machine could create more garbage through unintentional damage, so to combat that issue, the spacecraft will include a multitude of backup processes that can handle the speed and aggression of the aimless waste.

The risks are certainly worth the rewards, as NASA is currently tracking no less than 20,000 four-inch diameter balls of waste orbiting the planet that can harm astronauts, satellites, and small spacecrafts if not addressed soon.

The Brane craft will be built to stack, transport, and use with ease, capable of working in a group or independently through the well-controlled coordinates that a team of experts will be in charge of. Of course, it will still take a great deal of time and money to build, test, and release the Brane craft. Fortunately, the hundreds of hours and millions of dollars spent on the process could lead to the removal of every two-pound piece of space trash over the next ten years.

So far, the Brane craft is the most promising space junk removal concept yet, and if it comes to life, its impact could be significant.