Remember the Oscar the Grouch who likes to collect garbage in "Sesame Street"? Now a spaceship used to collect orbital debris is now named after it. This semi-automatic vehicle is called OSCaR ("Capture and Removal of Abandoned Spacecraft"). A team of students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is currently developing the aircraft.
OSCaR will be a CubeSat, meaning it will be a small rectangular satellite. In fact, OSCaR will consist of three connected 10 × 10 × 10 cm (3.9 inch) CubeSat units. One unit will contain its propellant and propulsion module; the other will contain its data storage, GPS and communication system; the last one will contain four barrels and shoot out the net connected to the tether.
The idea is that multiple OSCaRs will be brought into a larger spacecraft orbit and then released. Based on a catalog of known debris locations, each CubeSat will travel to a nearby one, possibly a small amount of remote guidance from the earth operator.
When OSCaR is close to the debris, the combination of thermal, optical and radar imaging systems in its front unit will help it aim at the target. Then it will shoot one of the nets, grab the debris and grab it through the net's tether. Because the spacecraft will have four such nets, a total of four space garbage can be collected per mission.
Once the mission is completed, OSCaR will automatically exit orbit, bringing itself and its collected debris into the Earth ’s atmosphere when re-entering.
"There is an informal agreement that has existed for several years, and those who put space objects there should have good civic literacy," said Professor Kurt Anderson, who is leading the student team designing the spacecraft. "We imagine that one day, we can send a whole set of OSCaR to work together on a lot of debris."
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