Space is Full of Junk. Here’s How to Clean It Up… 

-Oh...I have to use miles, right? -No, we are scientist. We use metric 2 seconds later -A piece of blueberry size....

For anyone interested in this topic, there's a hard sci-fi TV series from the 2000s called _Planetes_ that's about a future where cleaning up space debris has become necessary due to increased space travel. Of course, in that series, the clean up is largely done by hand, in order for human drama to happen, but it's otherwise technically-accurate and was produced in collaboration with space agencies.

I think the biggest threat is the smaller blueberry size pieces that they won't see coming.

4:24 satellites in higher orbits stay up there longer not because gravity is that much weaker, it's because of the huge reduction in air resistance.

The giant stuff isn't the biggest problem. It's the little stuff. We need to grab the big before it gets smashed, but there's already a ton of little things that need dealing with as well.

I now have a new phobia of a claw on a long tether coming down from the sky, grabbing me, and pulling me up into space.

I feel like this is of those things that's get talked about alot, but nothing is done.

I don’t like the idea of a one-time use space junk collector. I would think it would be expensive and wasteful. Keeping that claw design for larger debris is good but if the satellite had some propulsion to both push the debris down to earth and redirect the satellite to another piece of debris. Then with its last remaining propusion, use that to push itself to earth. This might save resources and money.

I really love that the demonstration claw, clearly seen around 9:40 - 9:45 was built from Lego. 🤣🤣

The mortal fear that Muriel Richard had on their face when they remembered you were American and had to convert to imperial 😂

5:27 don't worry we're talking science language here, we use the metric. Love it 😂

If you want to read/see some fiction around this topic, the manga/anime Planetes is a good example of this subject and other space habitation topics as well.

What will they do with the junk after capturing it? Burn it up in the atmosphere, gassing the metals they were made out of?

Individual launches for each piece of junk seems very inefficient. There was something about using lasers to heat up a piece of debris causing it to "thrust" itself into our atmosphere. I wonder what happened to that.

4:25 gravity’s grip may be insignificantly lighter, but the lower density of atmospheric particles is the cause of longevity in orbit here…

9:41 can we all just appreciate the wonderful use of LEGOS as a space engineering tool…..

Ah, the Kessler Syndrome. This deserves a lot of attention.

I feel like small, articulated, solar-powered ion-thrusters that could attach themselves to a piece of debris, gradually halt any rotation by thrusting opposite the direction of rotation, then thrust in the opposite direction of travel to gradually bleed of inertia, would be a great way to do this. You could launch many on a single mission, use the ion-thrusters to navigate to the object, then attach themselves via any of a number possible means (magnetic, self-curing epoxy, straps, etc.) You'd basically be turning any selected object into a solar-powered spacecraft with tiny-but-sustained thrust. The other idea I had would be essentially a semi-rigid "space parachute," tuned to create drag by either reflecting sunlight or to scoop up occasional air molecule present at those altitudes (or both). The air option would also gradually accumulate air molecules inside the "scoop" of the parachute, too, increasing the mass of the object (by a miniscule amount, but still).

I wrote a paper on this problem last year and I mentioned a unique way to remove junk without the issue of making contact with the dead satellite. Hanspeter Schaub and his team have been developing a craft that uses electrostatic attraction to slowly drag the satellites out of the way. It’s like a rudimentary tractor beam. Idk if it’ll work but I thought it was a cool idea.

4:25 made it sound like gravity strength and not atmospheric drag was causing decay. Sorry to nitpick, great video as always. Love you Joe. Thank you for making such amazing content

9:44 „gravity makes all of this harder“ Michael Scott:

I am so thankful we have folks who are thinking about this.

As always, another amazing edition but I must confess watching you morph into a 'Toon' was... PRICELESS!!!

The title reminds me of kurzegsagt and their space videos

Congratulations on 5 million!

Appreciating your effort🎉🎉

Hey Joe, I loved meeting you at quiz show, great vid!

Kessler syndrome doesn't get nearly enough attention in pop culture, so I'm very happy for this video! Starlink and similar 1000+ satellite swarm projects get me very concerned. Now that private launch systems are becoming so available, we definitely need more international rules to keep space safe for mankind against dangerous private exploitation.

I thought of an idea to turn this into a game, where the player has to collect as much trash as possible. Evey time someone logs in to the game they boot up a cleaning robot, get trash and then it goes back to the hub. Since it takes a while to train AI, humans can already do it.

Great video as always

Thank you!

I just found you. I subscribed immediately. All good wishes.

I love that Neal Stephenson explained all of this “to me” in his fantastic sci-fi novel, Anethem!! Fiction writers are the best.

Ok so what is it going to do with the items it grabs is it going to collect them or put them back into re entry to burn up?

so what does it do once it has captured the item ... does the whole thing come back down .. or does it release it so the item falls back to earth ..?

What are the cost projections? Who will fund this? What percentage of space junk will this work on?

This idea also reminds me of the movie Space Sweepers. Released in 2021 highly recommend watching

crazy how CG-like their real life model looks like with a little blur and bloom :)

10:15 We should ask Cooper from Interstellar to pilot it along with TARS... 😂😂

At 10:35 for a moment you looked like Judge Doom, who framed Roger Rabbit. :D Back on topic, I don’t recall this being addressed in the video but once the claw has a hold of some space debris, what does it do with it? Is the claw designed for repeated use or would they have to send out a new claw for every object that needs cleaning up? That’s going to be a whole lot of pieces…

Most of humanity is like this: "Litter everything and if it becomes a problem, clean it up". I'm of the "avoid garbage in the first place, then there's nothing to clean up" variety. Avoiding trash is always easier and cheaper than cleaning it up. Same in my household. The less I make a mess of my kitchen, the less I have to clean it up. I simply avoid making stuff dirty or having stuff lying around, then I also don't have to constantly clean and tidy up stuff. I remove excess water after showering (quick and easy with a window squeegee), so limestone never builds up in my shower (which is very hard to remove, often requires aggressive cleaning agents and still a lot of scrubbing). I do change socks, underwear and t-shirts daily but I wear the same jeans or pullover a couple of days, so I don't need to wash that often (why not if they are not sweaty or dirty?). I don't eat in my car or allow anyone else to do that, so I don't have to deal with crumbs and fat from fatty fingers. You can waste so much time and money on cleaning up a mess that would have been easy to avoid in the first place. I wish more people had this mindset, also when it comes to our environment. Instead of destroying and then somehow trying to repair, just don't destroy it.

can i just say i adore the fact they used lego to simulate the catching process? lol (9:29)

Reminds me of "Quark", the 70s era television sci-fi sitcom about a garbage scow whose mission was to clean up space garbage.

Could you use strong magnetism, with controlled variations and amplitude at the ends of its tenticals to slowly and safely bring in the debris to a halt before capturing it? Or is this a silly idea?

Wow!! Those smart people are amazing 😍

Claw is nice for big pieces. I would like to see a huge fuzzy net or something to try to snag the smaller pieces.

Good video!

Let's say this "Tentacle"-satellite works perfectly and can grab objects at any reasonable speed and rotation. 1. Then, how do you prevent creating new "microlitter" when holding mechanically the large litter object? It will hit the tentacles itself and maybe even the body of the cleanup-satellite. I liked the idea with magnets proposed at the end because there would be much less risk of creating new litter. Keep in mind that this microlitter travels extremely fast and can pierce satellites and objects which are in perfect condition. 2. Now the trash is in the tentacle. What next? You first of all have enlarged the surface of the original trash with the Tentacle. Are you going to navigate to Earth's atmosphere to let it burn down? Expensive and not scalable. Are you going to navigate away from Earth into the depths of space? Expensive and again not scalable. So is there are "Garbage Truck for Tentactle Cleaning Satellites" waiting to be filled in space? What's the solution here?

Thanks

7:25 idk, space isn't programmed to literally *make* you lose the claw game 😂 but fair point, space makes everything harder

Why is there a union jack on the spacecraft? Are they sending the junk to the UK? Good.

is the claw spacejunk legoset aviable or is that a one of a kind set?

Yep, this is going to prove indispensable. One hopes that it can be cost-effective, however.

Collecting big objects is just as important as eliminating small fragments. This will be the great engineering challenge my generation will face and I can't wait for the multiple groups that'll be doing this.

i wonder when they will be putting up the first postings for space junk collector jobs ... it's gonna be lit. :')

5:26 The horror😂😂

Its great to seeing what our client is doing and being part of their journey. Love seeing our animation to help them better tell their story!

All those big parts can be brought to s space station to be sorted. The little stuff? Perhaps a net can catch them. When the reservoir is full, de-orbit. Perhaps object avoidance for newer satellites?

That's great for big objects, but it's the ones too small to track that are likely the most deadly.

I'm a little confused. Maybe I missed something. They grab onto the junk with the tentacles but then what? Does it adjust its orbit just enough so that it deorbits and then let's go? Or does it grab on and then they both deorbit? Or something else?

One of the shuttles experienced a cracked window pane.. they determined that it was a fleck of paint traveling at hyper speeds, striking the window cracking it. The windows on the space shuttle were 3 inchs thick with a thermal pane barrier on the outside.

Literally what the anime "Planetes" was about!

Love the ADA 4x4

The smart Richard lady sounds like my French teacher, I am fascinated by the French English accent, which I think it's cute. I am learning French in my free time starting by listening to some French songs.

I want to see a live feed of this mission.

joe has the lunchtime youtube videos on lock

9:40 I love that this demo uses Lego 😀

now I really want to see some one try and use that thing like one of those claw machine games trying to win a prize and it just keeps slipping

So much for visitors from other worlds coming. Their crafts will be blasted with this random stuff if they try to enter our atmosphere.

I’m imagining the space junk claw set to the attract music from the Sports Arena Arcade Game. (The one that has you stop the blinking lights on a red light to claim a prize.)

i think last point is equally important as cleaning space debris, to plan future space missions with full lifespan that doesn't cause this problem in the first place.

'We're talking science language here....' this hit hard!

Yay! Lego prototyping!

I'm suprised they didn't mentioned the usage of LiDAR sensors. I think it would be really useful combined with machine learning. It could make a 3D model of the object with precise dimensions and distance.

So once the space junk has been captured, what happens next?

If I'm remembering right, this fun little scenario has a name. The Kessler syndrome. Also, I could swear I remember a Sci-Fi book I read a long time ago that had a orbital debris cleanup satellite that used some sort of net and once the net got full it would fling it back to Earth to burn up, possibly being preloaded with several

THE CLAAAAAAAW! The claw is our master. Claw chooses who will go and who will stay.

Have you heard about Astroscale?

love the Dodgeball ref. ADAA

"but the higher an object is in orbit, the weaker gravity's grip" ... well, kind of. But the less atmospheric drag plays the bigger role the higher up you get. Also, solar activity can play a part in that effect as well.

I missed something. Did they say what they will do with the captured space junk?

I'm your biggest fan ever sir ❤❤😊

I would suggest Cody'sLab idea of sending sand straight up without giving it speed to orbit the earth and everything thats orbiting would hit a sand cloud, slow down and burn in the atmosphere.

Scavenger: Alright y'all get yo nets, we're going fishing. Ought to make a pretty penny with these metals.

We already know that jet exhaust is shading the planet!

Switzerland is known for.....cheese! Appenzeller, Tilsiter, Le Gruyère, Emmentaler, cheese fondue, raclette..... Soooo 😋

Huge problem apparently looming....good thing we have such a good track record of keeping our terrestrial environment clean.....no tragedy of the commons here!!!

when catching an object in your hand, it does in fact make contact with your palm before your fingers close around it

The Clear Space claw robot may help to recover large intact objects and that is good. There needs to be (an even harder to do) solution to eliminate high energy small objects as well. One thing is certain, if we fail to clean it all up we could experience a cascading shower of space debris as a number of collisions begins a chain reaction and we all could end up going back to the 1960's with respect to communications and navigation. This is a critically important task that must be done right and it is not at all trivial to accomplish. This whole thing reminds me the the Sourcerer's Apprentice, who started into action systems that he could not control. Humans have done the same thing in almost every aspect of the modern world, including human made satelites and space exploration.

Just train the claw software on Outer Wilds and then tweak the parameters afterwards! Done :P

I heard on idea, it was a gigantic nerf ball that would get struck a slow space junk down trapping it inside the nerf ball. Then you’d just decelerate the ball, burning it all up on reentry. Well I dumbed it down because only just understood it and it was like 25 years ago.

what happens once they've captured junk? are there any plans to stop allowing things to simply burn up on re-entry? I might be cheap and simple, but seems like a waste of non-renwable reaouces

9:44 "Gravity makes all of us harder". Words of wisdom.

Thats great! What about earth junk?

"Oh my God, I have to calculate this in miles!" 😂

Reminds me of the anime Planetes

Robot with claw arms = STUPID IDEA It can only grab junk of a very specific size. If it's too big or too small in any direction it totally won't work. Then we'll have even more space junk up there as they bundle though other junk grabbing ideas. It's this is what we're relying on, humanity is doomed. 😔

4:25 no, the force of gravity barely changes if you just climb a few 100s of kilometers, what changes is the density of the atmosphere which leads to a change in drag.

I like how everything in the first 5min is shown and explained as if the debris is static around earth and not flying at thousands of kilometers because if it was static, it would fall to earth. Have fun trying to catch a walnut sized metal object flying at hundreds and thousands of kilometers an hours.

Wouldn't it be easier to use a net or something similar, so the "cleanup-robot" doesn´t need to match the rotation of the debris? Then it would maybe also have more space left, for e.g. additional fuel to use the robot more than once before deorbiting it, as the claws seem to use up quite some room if you also include their motors and additional needed generators for them.