AI helps in cleaning space debris

Machine learning algorithms are being used in the field of astronomy. They have made out softwares that could monitor the the working of spacecraft, intelligent software designed to object the directions and many more. 

There traffic in space is slowly becoming a nightmare. There are many obstacles up there orbiting around the space. The study of Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found the orbital space around earth is filled with more than 20,000 functional satellites and object with a lot of space junk which are more than10 centimeter. NASA said that 99percent of the dots surrounding the Earth are debris not any functional satellites.

In 2009, a definitional Russian satellite collided with a fully functioning US satellite. There was a huge damage and due tot the collision there were thousands of pieces of debris revolving around the space. Nasa played an important role and detected all the debris pieces for further collision. But if there will be more and more debris the chances of collision will increase which may lead to human casualties while space exploration. 

In 2018, it was reported a 19 year old, amber yang, a space enthusiast helped NASA detect and protect the astronauts form the junk floating around in the space. She when she was 15 had an interest in astrophysics. She in winter break learned the coding and decoding of ins and outs astrophysics, coding, and space junk. She developed a product called Seer Tracking which used AI to tract debris in the orbits. Since then she has been trying to improve the developed product. 

A plan has been designed to build a robotic orbital trash truck to clean the debris form the orbits around space. This is a collaborative plan of Stanford’s Space Rendezvous Lab and the European Space Agency. The plan starts with an AI navigation system to guide the the trash truck to the debris pieces but that limits only the Earth’s orbit. 

Each time debris hits any satellite or space station it creates more debris compounding the problem exponentially through what’s called the Kessler Syndrome. This problem seems severe in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in 1200 miles in earth’s thermosphere. With decades the junk is gonna increase which can soon gonna cause a lot of problems. For the solution America-Russia are trying to implement laser technique called broom to destroy the debris.

Stanford is aiming for somethings affordable and compact. The device is then gonna soon detect nano-substances and satellites with the all new algorithms. 

Pratyaksha Dhall

BW Reporters An aspiring journalist who loves to gain knowledge about technological advancements and loves to write about well being and events that people can relate to.