Background

If you plan to build an orbirtal elevator, debris are the first class menace. There's so many kinds of debris in size. Also, we want to demo weirdness of orbital dynamics.

What it does

Reclaiming debris by large vessel is nonsense, since matching orbit with small debris needs too much energy. We have to develop alternative method. A dischargeable small catcher probe would be an option. To catch debris, our idea is mimicking natural plants. A plant's recursive structure will absorb reaction of contact and tangle debris well. Then the probe will exploit electro-magnetic force working on a elecrified tether or force on solar sail to decelerate debris to fall. Our Solution

On the other hand, we'd like people to have curiousity about orbital dynamics, we made a mini-game. This small sample shows how elliptical orbit turns into circular orbit with accelerating at farthest point from the Earth. And, if you want to catch up with debris drifting ahead, decelerate to enter lower orbit first, pass the debris, then accelerate to enter higher orbit to wait for debris approaching from aft.

Since our programmer had few knowledges of JavaScript, developing mini-game was a cumbersome task.

NASA Resources

We referred the article below;

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibli...

Space Apps Offers

For whole people attended the event, advices by professor of Nagoya Univ. were very insightful and helpful.

Future Plans

If time permits, we want to try building more realistic 3D simulator using NASA's TLE data. But, we realized it's too difficult to play even 2D simulation. Without computer's assistance, manuvering spaceship in real world seems so desperate.

Built With

We developed JavaScript code on Mac, made slides on iPad.

Try it out

You can try mini-game at:

http://kenjisgalaxy.html.xdomain.jp/TheCatcher.htm...

Tags

#javascript #debris #satellite #simulator