Gravitational Trap for Space Debris in Geosynchronous Orbit

What is it about?

The proposed principle of space debris capture is based on the use of the heavy orbital collector placed so that space debris is in an attraction area of the collector confined to the Hill sphere. The basic idea of the proposed method was confirmed by numerical integration of the motion equation of the debris in polar coordinates relative to the collector. To perform gravitational capture of space debris the heavy space collectors (10-100 tons) are required. The idea of building the heavy orbital collector does not seem more fantastic than building an Earth space elevator that will have a length of about 100 thousand km and a mass of more than 10 thousand tons. Moreover, in the future, the role of the heavy orbital collector can be performed by a relatively small asteroid delivered to GEO.

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