An ultra-thin sail attached to a rocket part in China has been successfully deployed to speed up the departure from low Earth orbit and reduce the amount of space junk floating above our planet.
The sail was launched from a Long March 2D rocket. The Shanghai Academy of Spacecraft Technology announced a few days later that the drag sail had been successfully deployed to assist with the deorbiting of the rocket component, which won't happen for another two years or so.
The kite-shaped sail increases the drag against the object it is attached to. The rocket component will burn up in Earth's atmosphere as it goes down. It is a low cost solution to the problem of space debris.
The drag sail is about the same thickness as a strand of hair. The component that is currently attached to the upper stage of the rocket is around 661 pounds and is currently circling the Earth. The sail on the rocket will cause it to get dragged down to lower altitudes and reenter the atmosphere in about two years.
China has been careless with its rockets recently. There was debris from a Chinese rocket that fell onto a village in India. A Chinese Long March 5B rocket fell into the Indian Ocean in May 2021. In May 2020 there was an incoming Long March 5B rocket that caused pieces of debris to fall onto two villages in the country.
It is not clear if China will account for where pieces of the rocket might fall in order to avoid populated areas.
The hope is that the new technology will help clear space junk. More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris and many more smaller pieces are being tracked by the Department of Defense. As countries continue to expand their space programs, they will be able to figure out a way to deorbit their vessels less harmfully.
There are some cool images taken by NASA.
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