Earth is surrounded by more than 50,000 pieces of debris from satellites and rockets, capable of tearing through any structure like the ISS given the right circumstances.
Space isn¡¯t as empty as we think it is, especially not just around our planet. And a gecko is inspiring the biggest clean-up operation surrounding the earth.
NASA/JPL
Clearing all of this space junk is one of the unique problems facing space agencies across the world, as they seek to find a balance between more frequent satellite launches and managing the trash in space. Now, researchers have built a device that could help with just that.
Geckos have incredibly strong feet. Instead of the suctions cups you might assume them to have, they actually possess microscopic flaps on the underside of their feet. When these are in full contact with any surface, it creates a sort of electrostatic force (Van der Waals force) that keeps them stuck to it.
¡°What we've developed is a gripper that uses gecko-inspired adhesives,¡± a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford and lead author on the paper, said Mark Cutkosky, said. The reason for this is that space is a vacuum, so standard suction cups wouldn¡¯t work to grab debris. An adhesive capable of sticking to objects while also surviving the temperature variations of space would be expensive and hard to produce, and magnets wouldn¡¯t work on all the materials floating around Earth. So a Gecko-inspired device was the only available option.
Just like the Gecko¡¯s feet, Cutkosky¡¯s robot has microscopic flaps (though much larger in proportion to the robot¡¯s size), and operates using gentle pushes in the right direction.
¡°If I came in and tried to push a pressure-sensitive adhesive onto a floating object, it would drift away,¡± the paper¡¯s co-author Elliot Hawkes said. ¡°Instead, I can touch the adhesive pads very gently to a floating object, squeeze the pads toward each other so that they're locked and then I¡¯m able to move the object around.¡±
So far, the robot has been tested in a zero-gravity environment at JPL. There are two working prototypes ¨C one with small grabbing arms and another attached to the floor like a large table. ¡°We had one robot chase the other, catch it and then pull it back toward where we wanted it to go,¡± Hawkes added. ¡°I think that was definitely an eye-opener, to see how a relatively small patch of our adhesive could pull around a 300 kg robot.¡±
The prototypes are now being rebuilt using more durable materials, before being shipped off to the International Space Station for further testing.