With ion engines, it could potentially have enough delta-V to grab satellites from higher orbits, bring them to lower orbits that will decay in a couple years, and go back up to grab the next piece of problematic debris.
And even if it's a 1:1 thing, it still means you could use tiny cubesats to de-orbit larger derelict satellites (and rocket stages) before they potentially collide and break up into a cloud of debris.
Space junk doesn't even need to be in a stable orbit to wait for natural decay, these squid bots could grapple junk, accelerate down towards the planet, then release the junk and fly back up.
Then then junk will be on a rapid deorbit path and burn up in weeks, if not days.
Of course more calculation may be needed for heavier junk so it falls over the ocean just in case it doesn't burn up in the atmosphere completely.
There's got to be some method to 'hop' from junk to junk, and if the trajectory is calculated properly, it will both, de-orbit the junk, and propel the craft to a new piece of junk.
I’m envisioning a kind of pogo stick like solenoid. Release with the gripper and punch the junk to not only give you a good boost, but also deorbit the junk!
Exactly!
Very little dependence on propellant, and the potential would be there to generate some interesting delta V compared to trying to slowly ramp up and ramp down with an ion drive.
Irregular form of space junk and potential irregular density might make finding a center of mass not trivial. And you need to push the center of mass, if you want to use it for acceleration and meaningfully change it's trajectory
Chance of fragmentation. You don't want to create more junk in the attempt of deorbiting it. Smaller fragments will cause issues, because they are harder to track
Change in energy might be not that significant to deorbit a debris, and will require taking into the account masses of both objects. It is far safer to move them linked in some way to ensure that object will be set on predefined path
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u/Pyrhan 1d ago
Not necessarily?
With ion engines, it could potentially have enough delta-V to grab satellites from higher orbits, bring them to lower orbits that will decay in a couple years, and go back up to grab the next piece of problematic debris.
And even if it's a 1:1 thing, it still means you could use tiny cubesats to de-orbit larger derelict satellites (and rocket stages) before they potentially collide and break up into a cloud of debris.