Orbital debris races through space at extremely high speeds, threatening satellites as well as flights to and from the International Space Station. But aerospace startup TransAstra Corp. may have a solution with its inflatable Capture Bag system, which is capable of trapping objects of different shapes and sizes in Earth orbit. In developing this system for the International Space Station (ISS), TransAstra is sending it to the ISS National Laboratory for extensive evaluation of its abilities to execute these difficult captures.
The scalable Capture Bag lends it to removal of space waste of all shapes and sizes, from tiny pellets to large asteroids (see figure). A carrier vehicle, such as the ISS, brings the bag to a target for capture where it is closed around the target. It can be reopened and used to capture multiple pieces of debris during a single flight. Captured objects can be replaced in safer orbits or brought to a repurposing station.
As TransAstra chief engineer Thibaud Talon noted: “The beauty of this technology is that we can capture anything that fits into the bag, whether that is an asteroid or a satellite.” Talon added: “The system is designed around an inflatable, pressurized structure. Gravity plays a big role in how the bag behaves, so it is critical to demonstrate how it works in actual microgravity.”
For testing, the Capture Bag will be inflated inside Voyager Technologies’ Bishop Airlock on the ISS. The airlock can be depressurized to simulate the low-gravity conditions of space. The behavior of the Capture Bag under deep-space-like conditions will be recorded with multiple cameras, including one inside the Capture Bag. TransAstra’s chief executive officer (CEO) Joel Sercel explained: “We’ve tested Capture Bag extensively in vacuum conditions on the ground but deploying it in microgravity is the only way to be sure that we understand how this works.” Sercel posed the growing importance of such systems in the coming years: “Given the growth of traffic in low Earth orbit, within the next 10 years, we will see tens of thousands of objects there.”
