Launch satellites into orbit for the sole purpose of hooking out-of-control space debris, to direct them away from geo-stationary routes to the atmosphere, where they will be destroyed and no longer pose any danger.
This is the program, reported by South China Morning Post1 of Hong Kong, developed by the Shanghai Aerospace Control Technology Institute, a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The technology consists in the possibility for a "scavenger" satellite (satellite scavenger) to approach a body in orbit without control, and "hook" it with a telescopic arm in order to "push" it towards our atmosphere by pushing the thrusters of which is equipped.
According to data published by the Hong Kong newspaper, the "scavanger" satellites, at present, can only attack debris that rotates at speeds not exceeding 3,2 degrees per second, but the project would be nearing completion and would also have found applications in the field of drones, robots and intelligent weapon systems.
An ambitious program - which also sees the USA and the EU in the race - in which no less than ten satellites weighing 10 kg each would have been placed in orbit, all equipped with a triple sensor arm capable of identifying the shape of the detritus, measure its size and rotation speed, and finally calculate the exact coupling trajectory with the use of artificial intelligence (IA).
The existence of the program was announced last month by the deputy director of the National Laboratory of Space Flight Dynamics Technology of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian (Shaanxi Province), which confirmed how many parts of the program are still classified due to possible military implications.
The "dual" technology developed by the Chinese, in fact, allows the satellite to remain attached to any orbiting body, remaining for the whole time hidden from observation from the ground (made possible thanks to the reverberation of light on the metal parts).
Debris is one of the problems most felt by the international scientific community.
No later than a year ago, the Chinese space station TIANGONG 1, which fortunately fell into the South Pacific Ocean, came out of control.
Even the possibility of reacting to such situations may have motivated Beijing to give further impetus to the program of the "Scavenger" satellites, with the intention of acquiring, before others, a crucial capacity, in an operational dimension - the spatial dimension - increasingly central in scientific and military competition with the USA.
1 https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3007186/how-chinas-scave...
