The Military Industrial Corporation “NPO Machine Building” patented a technique that would allow cleaning up space junk on the geostationary orbit.
The Honorary Director General and Chief Designer of the “NPO Machine Building” Gerbert Efremov, in his comments to the “Interfax” news agency, announced the Corporation’s plans to design a space vehicle, the main mission of which would be to clean up space debris on the geostationary orbit (GSO).
In particular, he informed that the company already got a special patent to change the orbit of inactive satellites operating in GSO.
“This is done by launching a special space vehicle in the opposing motion, that is, not in the motion of the Earth, as all satellites are launched into GEO, but in the opposite direction. This vehicle will be put a little below or above the orbit of an overage satellite. Most often below”, as the scientist explains.
According to Mr. Efremov, this cleaning satellite will be equipped with braking modules to be directed to the head-on collision with the life-expired satellite to be removed from the orbit.
In spite of granting that patent to the “NPO Machine Building”, this project is not a top-priority for the Corporation.
“This patent is completely public and does not represent any secrecy. To obtain it, there were applied a minimum of efforts and financial means. But all this, is ideas of the future”, as Gerbert Yefremov clarified.
According to the “NPO Machine Building”, there are actually over 17.5 thousand orbital space objects. And just 1370 of them are operating and controllable space vehicles.
Let us recall that in December of last year, the Chinese engineers presented their project of an orbital garbage collector.
