How AI-powered lasers could help with space debris

[Admin]

A network of space-based lasers could help nudge debris away from collision courses with the International Space Station, according to new research.

How AI-powered lasers could help with space debris : Read more

 

[Classical Motion]

If they're using pulse as the article alludes to, wouldn't earth laser stations be in the wrong direction? Other than that, earth stations would have many advantages. There are certain frequency slots, that offer low impedance thru the atmosphere, in and around the visual range. A network of earth laser stations could be pulsed 24/7.....programed with targets as they pass by. And high powered.

Has anyone checked if heating and ionizing a debris object would lower the orbit and at what rate it might fall? If you could temporarily "smoke" an object, charged it, wouldn't our M field slow it and bring it down?

 

[billslugg]

Lasers aimed from Earth could ablade the under surface of a piece of debris. This would raise the orbit, but not add any forward energy. Thus the orbit must be lowered somewhere else to compensate. With enough shots we might drop it back into the atmosphere. The problem is, when shooting enough power from Earth, the laser ionizes the air channel and loses quite a bit of energy. Shooting from space is much easier, no adaptive optics needed, no losses to the air.
Hitting with a laser does not charge an object. Hitting with an electron beam would. Interaction with the Earth's magnetic field could be used to bring it down. Problem there is charge buildup on the satellite doing the shooting. But what we do there is get electrons by ionizing hydrogen. Then we save the protons and shoot them off in another direction, targetting another satellite.

 

[Classical Motion]

I had heard several years ago that had been solved with a laser inside a laser. The first laser's purpose to ionize the air. And supposedly, that ionized column behaves like a hole for a short period. This is when the second laser turns on......up thru that hole. Rinse and repeat. This was suppose to enable laser links with earth for high bandwidth. Or something like that. That was several years ago. A lot of this stuff might be classified now.......with the hyper missile program. And our inability to stop them.

I would have thought that heating the object to the point of ionization would cast off electrons from object. Leaving a positively charged object.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, a first laser can ionize the air channel, then the second laser fires through the open channel, focused by the refractive index gradient. Problem is the enormous amount of power involved to ionize the channel. It is essentially a lightning strike, something that equals the entire power output of the US for about half a millisecond. Much more efficient in space.

If a laser is aimed at the skin of a satellite, it will vaporize a thin layer at the surface, then it will ionize the gas into a cloud of charged particles, half positive, half negative, flying into space. The satellite would remain uncharged.

 

[HughL]

"AI-powered lasers "???
Clearly the lasers are what moves the space junk, but the article makes no mention of either
1) where the power for the lasers comes from, clearly not "AI" = a style of computer algorithm
as one commentor mentioned, ground based lasers have a real power advantage.
2) What the real role of the "AI" is, the source didn't even use "AI", just "a suite of algorithms"

Please use fact/source based titles, & back that title with info from references, otherwise the post appears ignorant of science & engineering.

 

[merridew22]

I feel like a space elevator would be a great structure to mount debris-targeting machine learning software lasers. Protects the (space) elevator from larger sized debris, and could be effective as more space elevators are installed, more bases = more coverage of Near-Earth-Orbit satellites that start to go astray.