Cleaning Up Space Debris

A spacecraft thruster that fuels itself by eating space junks is all set to take off with the Airbus Bartolomeo mission.

- Shilpi Chakravarty

Have we ever pondered upon how floating space junks can cause major damage to the satellites orbiting around the Earth or many costly space missions? Neumann Drive can be of great help. The spacecraft thruster not only has the potential to remove fragmented rocket parts, defunct spacecraft, and other space junk, but also feeds on metal junk to power itself over long distances.

Neumann Drive is a pulsed cathodic arc plasma source that is being used as a spacecraft thruster.  It has been developed by Australia-based startup Neumann Space. Patrick Neumann, Founder and CTO, Neumann Space says, “I developed the concept while an undergraduate at the University of Sydney, during a third-year Physics research project where I was mapping the electric potentials in titanium plasma discharge.  I measured the ion motion at over 22 km/s and thought that this could make a good spacecraft thruster.  As I developed the system further, the results I got encouraged me to keep going, and the concept grew from that.”

While the spacecraft thruster is slated to be a big boon to the space world and has the potential to catch many eyeballs, it is cost-effective too. Now, the question is…

How does it work?