Wow this new's make's me pretty Happy as I've been tracking EOS for a long time. I've even worked somewhere where Dr Ben Greene's company had some insignificant parts made. ;D
I will post this new's as it happened:
May 10 2014:
'Space fence' can track debris but clean up remains elusiveQuoteSpace: so vast, so open. And yet, so littered with junk.
Hundreds of thousands of pieces of man-made debris are floating around out there, the detritus of more than 50 years of spaceflight. There have been chunks of dead satellites and spent rocket boosters - even a glove that an astronaut dropped in 1965 and a spatula that escaped from a space shuttle in 2006.
Because it zips along faster than a speeding bullet, the trash poses an ever-growing threat to the satellites that help the military communicate and gather intelligence and serve the world's obsession with Google Earth and movies on-demand. Until last year, the Pentagon used what was called a "space fence" to track the junk and warn of potential collisions that make owners scramble to move their satellites out of the way.
But that system managed to keep up with only a fraction of it all, and it went out of commission last year. Now the US Air Force is poised to take a more modern crack at the problem with a new space fence.
With a contract expected to be awarded in the next few weeks, the program is designed to be mankind's best effort yet at tracking space pollution. But the new space fence still doesn't provide what many think is the ultimate solution: cleaning up space.
"There's a lot of stuff up there, and the impact of the new space fence will be to track more objects and smaller objects," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College.
Tracking the debris "is a necessity, but not sufficient," she said. "We need to move on to an active plan for removal."
The fence isn't really a fence, but rather a high-frequency radar like a flashlight beam in a dark room that illuminates the bits of dust swirling around. All those little bits are then catalogued and tracked as they pass through the radar again and again, until analysts, using massive computer databases, can predict where those pieces of debris will be in the future and when they might come close enough to collide with something.
SOURCE:http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/space-fence-can-track-debris-but-clean-up-remains-elusive-20140510-zr7i7.html
On Aug 26th this year a company I've been rabbiting on about for a long time made new's here downunder regarding a contract they signed in relation to space junk, and an odd thing about using Ground Based LASER for maneuvering such junk. ;D 8)
Australian company signs deal to track space junkQuoteIt's a worst case scenario - a piece of space junk obliterates a satellite, creating an avalanche of junk that wipes out more satellites until they're all gone.
There'd be no weather, communication, navigation or spy satellites in Earth's orbit.
Dr Ben Greene says NASA and all major space agencies believe there is a reasonable risk of this occurring within 15 years. "It could happen tomorrow. It's unlikely but it could. It is a race against time for us to get a solution," he said.
Part of the solution is a new agreement between Dr Greene's company Electro-Optic Systems (EOS) and aerospace firm Lockheed Martin to develop a new network to track space junk.
With a global system of sensors, initially at EOS at Mount Stromlo, Canberra, and a new facility in Western Australia, operators can be informed of the risk of damage from space debris so they can move satellites.
"The fundamental purpose is to move satellites that are most at risk," he said.
EOS has been working on space junk for years, investing $80 million in developing laser and optical tracking systems.
Step one, covering the next five to six years, is to track the debris with EOS technology in combination with other systems such as the US Air Force Space Fence Radar, Dr Greene said.
Step two will be an orbital clean-up, involving space missions to remove dead satellites.
New technology likely in five to seven years would use ground-based lasers to nudge smaller objects into lower orbits so they burn up in the atmosphere.
"We consider the strategic partnership with Lockheed Martin a major step towards the achievement of critical mass of sensors, data and services," Dr Greens said.
SOURCE:http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/australian-company-signs-deal-to-track-space-junk-20140826-108r7m.html
WOW... Thats huge news! which is now Public. It was easy to find if you knew about this company years ago, but it's another thing that they published what they did in Australia's most prestigious Newspaper :O
Anyway Peeps all the best!
You now live on a planet which can use Earth Based Laser's like Tractor Beam's which were once a fantasy we watched occur whilst sat glued to a box projecting a story to our minds called
Star Trek :D
Make good use of it LOL
I have to say that sometime's I wholly hate the internet these day's and much prefer pursuit's of attempting to run 100km's in one day.
This is not one of those day's though. As what I regretted posting on our National Broadcaster here in Australia has come back to help me rather than bite me in the arse to find a link to an Interview that has Dr Ben Greene Talking some rather Juicy Details LOL
Cash for Comet
Sunday 24 August 2003 1:05PM
SOURCE:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/buzz/cash-for-comet/3633522#transcript
I've posted this more link more than once... welcome to your new reality 8)
Space AblationQuoteAblation is "the process of generating forces on objects by means of surface interactions with energy projected from a distant point". Laser beams, directed from earth to intersect with objects in space, generate significant forces if the interaction is carefully controlled.
Up until now, the only way to avoid space debris was to adjust your course around it to prevent a collision. EOS is now fine-tuning technology that will allow pieces of space debris and other objects in space to be physically maneuvered into a different orbit using long range high power plasma beam (ablation).
SOURCE:
http://www.eos-aus.com/?pid=17
Infact I remember posting this to the uber skeptoids on ATS and they shut up LOL
Re space junk... I would be willing to bet that if all the debris were accounted for, the average size would be Human-sized or less. Now. Envision every one of the roughly 8 billion of Us on this planet shooting up into space. The area of the surface of the earth is quite a bit smaller than the area of any height above the earth, and at the height of space, a fair deal bigger.
Even if We presumed that all debris is at identical height, a few hundred thousand pieces is really EXTREMELY sparse if distributed evenly. If all 8 billion of Us were up there, We'd STILL be very sparsely distributed. I mean, if We were placed on the planet in roughly equal distribution there would be miles and miles between each of Us. Add many levels of height and the distribution becomes even more widely spaced.
So, though I am not saying that there is no hazard posed by pieces of stuff, I can say for sure it's not remotely like the pics of Earth with dots that, if presumed to be to scale, would be the size of a small moon - like maybe one from Mars - in size. It's not nearly the issue They are making it out to be.
Just sayin'.
Remember guys, anything that is deployed, i.e. nets, ground or space base lasers, can and will be considered a weapon. UN treaty strictly forbids this. Now you'll say not everyone signed the treaty so they are not bound by it...That will soon change, believe me...
Rock
Quote from: Amaterasu on August 27, 2014, 10:55:05 PM
Re space junk... I would be willing to bet that if all the debris were accounted for, the average size would be Human-sized or less.
Its not just the size of the junk, it is how fast it travels....
17,500 mph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of
debris to do much damage.
Quote from: burntheships on August 28, 2014, 12:18:16 AM
Its not just the size of the junk, it is how fast it travels....
17,500 mph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of
debris to do much damage.
While I grasp that issue well, mostly, when We go up there, We are traveling at similar speeds except when getting there and leaving. The probability of being hit, I would think, approaches zero.
Quote from: Amaterasu on August 28, 2014, 03:06:38 AMThe probability of being hit, I would think, approaches zero.
Not quite.
1996, - French satellite was hit and damaged by debris from a French rocket that had exploded a decade earlier.
10 February, 2009, - defunct Russian satellite collided with and destroyed a functioning U.S. Iridium commercial satellite. The collision added more than 2,000 pieces of trackable debris to the inventory of space junk.
2007 China's anti-satellite test used a missile to destroy an old weather satellite, added more than 3,000 pieces to the debris problem.
Space Junk is a challenge to all future space travel, even flecks of
paint damage the ISS.
With the continuous launch of satellites by private and government
entities, the problem will only escalate.
Listen to Dr. Joe, Denise Marcel & me talk about all kinds of things including space debris cleanup on the Moebanshee show!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArUE7JX8Oas