3. SPACE
• Space is the boundless, three-dimensional
extent in which objects and events occur and
have relative position and direction.
• Leibniz held that space is no more than the
collection of spatial relations between objects
in the world.

5. SPACE JUNK
• A conceptual artwork representing defunct
satellites, failed missions, and shrapnel
orbiting a few hundred miles above Earth.
• It is the term used to describe man-made
rubbish floating in space – often litter
from space exploration, including spanners,
nuts, bolts, gloves and shards of space
craft.

6. FACTS ABOUT SPACE JUNK
• As many as ten million pieces of human-made
debris are estimated to be circulating in space
at any one time.
• Experts believe that global positioning
systems, international phone connections,
television signals and weather forecasts could
be affected by increasing levels of space junk.

7. FACTS ABOUT SPACE JUNK
• The windows of space shuttles are often
chipped by space junk when returning to
earth.
• The majority of the debris in space is believed
to consist of small particles but some objects
are larger, including spent rocket stages,
defunct satellites and collision fragments.

9. FACTS ABOUT I.S.S.
• The International Space Station is fitted with
special impact shield known as the Whipple
Bumper, which is designed to protect the
structure from damage caused by collisions
with minor debris.

11. SOME INCIDENTS
• A crash between a defunct Russian Cosmos
satellite and an Iridium Communications Inc.
satellite in February 2009 left around 1,500
pieces of junk whizzing around the earth at
4.8 miles a second.
• A Chinese missile test destroyed a satellite in
January 2007, leaving 150,000 pieces of debris
in the atmosphere, according to Dr.
Gopalaswamy.

14. Why should we be
worried?

15. • In space, garbage doesn’t just sit there—it
hurtles around the globe at extreme speeds.
• The more human-made objects whizzing
around in this belt, the more likely deadly
collisions become.
• Current as well as future missions to space will
doubtlessly be affected by this lethal band of
hyper-fast trash.

18. • The United Nations Office for Outer Space
Affairs (UNOOSA) issued Space Debris
Mitigation Guidelines in 2009, urging the
removal of spacecraft and launch vehicles
from the Earth’s orbit after the end of their
missions.
• NASA keeps close tabs on at least 16,000 of
these objects that are larger than 10 cm in
diameter.
• The Swiss Space Center at EPFL is launching
CleanSpace One, a project to build the first
prototype in a family of “de-orbiting”
satellites.

20. Lasers and telescopes now on the
drawing board can slow pieces of loose
material encircling Earth so that they re-
enter the atmosphere.

21. • Laser orbital debris removal (LODR) as best
suited for clearing both large and small debris.
• LODR uses the impulse generated by laser
ablation of the debris surface by a focused,
pulsed ground-based laser to change the debris
orbit and cause it to re-enter the atmosphere.
• We use a telescope to focus the laser down to a
30cm diameter circle on a target 1000km away.

23. •
RESULTS target during a
2
Getting about 75kJ/m onto the
5ns pulse, which creates a plasma jet.
• Slows down small debris items by 10cm/s for
each pulse.
• Few nanometers of surface are vaporized and the
object is not melted or fragmented by the gentle
ablation pulse.
• At a pulse rate of 10Hz and average power 75kW,
the laser can slow targets up to 10cm diameter
sufficiently in a single overhead pass that they re-
enter the earth's atmosphere and burn up,
because the amount of slowing required is only
about 100m/s.

24. BENEFITS
• An LODR system would provide the lowest
cost per object removed.
• Target access is at the speed of light,
redundant, and agile.
• Can handle tumbling objects, while
mechanical grapplers cannot.
• The system has serendipitous uses aside from
general debris clearing, such as preventing
collisions.

27. Thank you