Wozniak startup to share orbital space junk data Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak opened up about his space startup Privateer at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this week. Privateer's mission is to build software that taps into data from various sources to track objects in Earth orbit, which includes satellites and debris that could potentially …
Interesting stuff. I'm going to the stag do of a former colleague at the weekend, who is now an associate professor at Warwick University, who does work tracking space debris these days. It will be good to get his take on this. Maybe Woz should get over to Warwick as they are hosting NAM this year.
The article mentions geosynchronous orbit, but also mentions other things which are more relevant to low earth orbit (ISS, satnav, etc) - which are a long way apart (and energy considerations mean not much crosses between those).
Is the problem limited to (or more critical for) certain orbits? Is this initiative limited to certain types of orbits? It would be useful if the article was clearer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
https://myanimelist.net/manga/481/Planetes
The story of Planetes follows the crew of the DS-12 "Toy Box" of the Space Debris Section, a unit of Technora Corporation. Debris Section's purpose is to prevent the damage or destruction of satellites, space stations and spacecraft from collision with debris (so-called "space debris") in Earth's and the Moon's orbits. They use a number of methods to dispose of the debris (mainly by burning it via atmospheric reentry or through salvage), accomplished through the use of EVA suits.
Not a bad series tbh.
"Privateer is planning to launch its own satellites"
Anybody taking odds on whether these fly-boxes may eventually add to what needs to be tracked?
Not suggesting he'd intentionally create additional bits for his company to track - would be expensive and dumb, and he certainly ain't the latter. But it's within the realm of possibility.
And it's a serious question - no matter how well-intentioned, putting a box up there means the risk is non-zero.
"Anybody taking odds on whether these fly-boxes may eventually add to what needs to be tracked?"
It could be that Woz is going to put up satellites that can cause "space debris" to drop out of orbit, in a controlled way.
This could be via all sorts of methods, as have been tried recently, such as "nets" or "harpoons", or even the odd "PAM" (power assist module) that might be strapped onto the larger "birds"...
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